An eight-year-old Hindu boy has been formally charged with violating Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws over an incident occurring at a madrassa in Pakistan's Punjab province. The boy's arrest occurred in late July of this year when a teacher at the madrassa laid a complaint after the boy allegedly urinated on a carpet in the madrassa's library. Police promptly arrested the boy and charged him with blasphemy, holding him in prison for a week before a court granted him bail on August 4.
Following the boy's release, protesters desecrated the Siddhi Vinayak Temple in Bhong village where the boy lived. He and his family have since gone into hiding as have numerous other Hindu families living in the area. Paramilitary troops have since been deployed to the area to diffuse the situation and prevent further unrest. To date, 50 people have been arrested for vandalizing the Hindu temple and 100 more are still being investigated.
Muslim-Hindu tensions remain high this year with more than a dozen attacks on Hindu temples in the past twelve months. Responding to international outrage over the latest incident, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has called for the arrest of all those involved as well as pledging that the Pakistani government will restore the temple. As for the still-unnamed boy, the charges have been dropped following pressure from media and human rights groups. Though Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, the Special Representative to the Prime Minister on Religious Harmony and the Middle East, initially denied media reports, he has since called for an investigation of the police officers who laid the original charges.
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