From the Daily Times of Pakistan via the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, with thanks to Ali Dashti:
Lahore, May 25: Samuel, a blasphemy suspect, is in critical condition at General Hospital after a police constable hit him on his head with a brick cutter on the morning of May 22.
Constable Faryad, who attacked Samuel, was sent to jail after a case was registered against him.
Even though the case has been brought into the open, the authorities are still trying to keep the whole matter a secret. The Punjab Home Department has banned visitors to the hospital’s ward No 18, where Samuel is being treated. The police refused to show a copy of the FIR and discuss more details. The hospital staff was also reluctant to speak.
HRCP led a fact-finding into the incident. A police officer told the team that Faryad appeared calm after trying to kill Samuel but realized he had done something ugly the next day.
The team described the case as horrific, lacking education, awareness, sensibility and understanding and the result of a clear misuse of the blasphemy law.
Samuel alias Nadeem, the son of a man named Emanuel from Saidan Shah near Upper Mall Lahore, had been charged with blasphemy under Section 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code.
Chaudhry Muhammad Yaqoob, librarian of the Darul Islam Lawrence Garden, Lahore, registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Samuel, accusing him of throwing waste by the wall of a mosque near the library.