The Pakistani Anti-Terror Court in Lahore has indicted 16 Christians for the killing of two suspected terrorists after the March 15 bombing of two churches in Youhanabad.
In addition, Fides News Agency reported, 12 other Christians have been charged with damaging state property in the protests that followed after the attack.
Suicide bombers detonated their explosives in front of two churches in Lahore on March 15, killing 15 people.
Christians took to protesting on the streets in the days after the bombing. British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) reporter Shamim Masih told Christian Today the day after the attack that the Christian mobs lynched and burned two men who were suspected to have links to the perpetrators of the suicide bombing. The protesters also allegedly blocked roads and smashed car windows in anger.
According to USA Today, the large scale protests paralysed Lahore's transport system, prompting the government to reroute buses away from the ruins of the bombed churches and the Christian protesters.
Masih also said that riot police responding to the violence killed four Christians, while Muslims attacked the protesting Christians and killed six more.
The Taliban's splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attacks, which Pakistan's Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said were acts of "utter desperation" in the face of imminent defeat at the hands of Pakistani armed forces.
"We have shrunk the space for them to operate in," he said in an article at the Pakistan Herald.
BPCA head Wilson Chowdhry said that the Christians' violent response to the bombing was spurred by what they regard as the government's failure to protect them.
"Here we had two suicide bombers ready to attack not one, but two churches... the government does not provide the same protections to Christians as it does to other groups in Pakistan," said Chowdhry.
"There is a lot of hurt in the community, a lot of rage. They are still recovering from the incident in Peshawar," he added, referring to the 2013 bombing of the All Saints' church in Peshawar in which nearly 100 people were killed.
