A Christian couple narrowly escaped with their lives in Pakistan after they were accused of blasphemy by an angry mob.
The couple, in Makki village in Punjab, were saved by Sheikhupura police after Muslim clerics accused them of blasphemy.
The clerics were responding to accusations by others in the village that the couple's sleeping mat carried an advertisement with Arabic inscriptions from the Quran. They were said to have blasphemed simply by sleeping on a mat thus decorated.
Local clerics in the Makki village, in Pakistan's Punjab province, had accused the couple of blasphemy, after some locals claimed that an advertisement on a mat they were using to sleep on, had some Arabic inscriptions from the Quran.
Following the accusations, a mob proceeded to beat the couple on Tuesday.
The Express Tribune reported that police intervened in time to save their lives after the couple, a labourer and his wife, were beaten up by a mob following the accusation of blasphemy by Muslim clerics.
Police chiefs commanded the couple must be rescued at all costs.
By the time the couple were saved, the mob had grown to many hundreds of people, many from neighbouring villages.
Authorities in Pakistan are desperate to avoid more murders like those just before Christmas, when Shehzad Masih and his wife Shama Bibi, were accused of blasphemy after burnt pages of the Quran were found near their house. There was widespread international disgust after they were attacked with bricks and shovels by a mob and then burnt alive in a brick oven.
