Federal agents in Pakistan last week arrested a Christian under a blasphemy law mandating the death penalty in relation to material that appeared on Facebook groups without his knowledge, sources said.
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials took 24-year-old Arsalan Gill of Railway Quarters in Mughalpura, Lahore, into custody on March 17 as he returned home from his work as a sweeper, said his brother Suleman Gill.
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The impoverished Catholic family was shocked when an FIA official told them late that night that their son was arrested and charged with sharing blasphemous content on Facebook groups. The FIA officials did not let them meet with him that night, Suleman Gill said.
‘No idea’
“The next morning when we were finally able to meet him briefly, we asked him about the accusation,” Gill told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “He told us that some unknown persons had added him to two groups on Facebook without his knowledge, and he had no idea about the content that was shared on those pages.”
The FIA charged Arsalan Gill under multiple sections of Pakistan’s widely misused blasphemy law, including Section 295-C, which carries a mandatory death penalty, according to the First Information Report (FIR) the agency filed. He was also charged under Section 11 of the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act 2016, which prescribes imprisonment of up to seven years for preparing or disseminating information through any information system or device that promotes or is likely to promote interfaith, sectarian or racial hatred.
Rights advocates said it was quite likely that the impoverished Christian was targeted by a “blasphemy business group” that, according to the National Commission for Human Rights and the Special Branch of the Punjab Police, has entrapped hundreds of innocent persons, including Christians, in false cases of online blasphemy by using honey traps and pornographic websites.
World Watch
Pakistan ranked eighth on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written and originally published by Morning Star News.
