In Pakistan, an increasing number of people are being accused of blasphemy for digital crimes. Rights groups have described a type of “blasphemy business,” in which fabricated evidence, digitally doctored screenshots, or false witness statements are used to initiate police complaints. In December 2025, the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi Bench acquitted six individuals who had been sentenced to either life imprisonment or death in a digital blasphemy case. The court found that the prosecution failed to establish any credible link between the accused and the alleged online material.
In its observations, the court also alluded to the growing rise of “blasphemy businesses,” noting the increasing use of fabricated or unverified digital content to implicate individuals in capital offenses.
The targeted individuals, predominantly from religious minority or low-income communities, are then pressured to pay intermediaries to avoid prosecution, quash cases, or negotiate with complainants and clerical authorities. This marks a shift from opportunistic blasphemy accusations to systematic entrapment operations run by organized crime networks that weaponize these provisions for extortion.
In Rawalpindi, a young job-seeker was contacted on WhatsApp by someone posing as a female recruiter who built rapport before sending him a sexually explicit image overlaid with Islamic scripture. When he questioned it, she claimed it was a mistake and insisted he forward the image back to her. Reluctant but desperate for work, he complied. Days later, she invited him to meet for what she described as a job interview. Four men were waiting. The men beat him, seized his phone, and turned him over to the authorities. That single forwarded image, manufactured and sent to him under false pretenses, was enough to support a blasphemy charge against him.
Entrapment Networks and Institutional Collusion
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, especially Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, which mandates a death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, along with other perceived offenses, have produced a high-risk environment where even an unsubstantiated allegation can result in arrest, mob violence, or extrajudicial killing. At least 104 people have been killed extrajudicially following blasphemy allegations between 1994 and 2024. In this climate, the business of blasphemy thrives, and the allegation itself holds such destructive power that it becomes a tool through which lives can be threatened, upended, or permanently altered.
Rights organizations and victim advocates point to the involvement of actors with ties to religious groups and, in some cases, complicity from individual officials within the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). FIA officers have allegedly registered complaints without forensic verification, accepted screenshots at face value, or acted on anonymous digital tips.
Private online vigilante groups with ties to extremist organizations such as the Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) are at the forefront of prosecuting online blasphemy cases. The most active group is the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan (LCBP), an organization whose stated mission is to take “decisive action against blasphemy.” According to the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), Pakistan’s FIA Cyber Crime Wing charges hundreds of young and vulnerable people with blasphemy based on social media content, often in coordination with organizations that profit from the business of accusations of blasphemy.
In the case of Shagufta Kiran, the Christian mother of four from Islamabad was arrested in 2021 after unknowingly forwarding a WhatsApp message that contained sexually explicit material overlaid with religious text. The arrest was carried out under both Section 295 C and Section 11 of the Pakistan Electronic and Cybercrime Act of 2016, which deals with hate speech and glorification of offences.
Soon after, Kiran was threatened by a man who demanded money and threatened her to convert to Islam. When she and her family refused, FIA agents raided her home and detained her children. In September 2024, following a protracted three-year trial, a court sentenced her to death after concluding that she had shared offensive content about Islam, despite her consistent denial and the lack of clarity around how the message reached her phone. She is currently on death row awaiting appeal.
Kiran’s case demonstrates criminal coordination, but also exposes the permeability of state institutions. In many cases, accused individuals are forced to flee their homes, relocate their families, or abandon their livelihoods. Extortion becomes effective because the alternative is not simply a court trial, but in fact, potential death at the hands of a mob or state.
The existence of these networks reflects both the weakness of investigative safeguards and the potency of blasphemy allegations as tools of intimidation. These vulnerabilities become even more dangerous in an era of convincing AI-generated images, making it far easier to fabricate evidence and trap individuals in false cases.
Religious minorities within Pakistan are especially vulnerable. Christians, Ahmadis, Hindus, Sikhs, and Shia Muslims face both legal discrimination and societal hostility, which make them prime targets. The overlap between organized blasphemy networks and pre-existing sectarian animosity transforms individual cases into community-wide threats.
Recognition Without Structural Reform
Some of Pakistan’s government officials are beginning to acknowledge that blasphemy gangs pose a systemic threat. The Islamabad High Court’s 2025 directive to establish an inquiry commission was a significant acknowledgment of both the scale and seriousness of the problem. Yet it was nixed shortly after it was proposed. Isolated police officials have spoken publicly about fabricated evidence and misuse of legal provisions.
Political actors, including mainstream parties, remain reluctant to challenge groups that use blasphemy as a mobilizing tool. Investigations into mob violence rarely result in sustained accountability, and charges against vigilantes are often dropped or weakened over time.
The persistent refusal of the Pakistani state to overhaul these statutes represents a fundamental departure from international human rights standards, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Pakistan is a signatory.
The core of the crisis lies in the fact that these laws do not require criminal intent, meaning that accidental digital shares or AI-generated fabrications can result in a death sentence. This legal vacuum has turned the judiciary into a reluctant participant in a system where the process itself becomes the punishment, often dragging out for years while the accused languishes in solitary confinement for their own “protection” from prison mobs.
The total scrapping of Sections 295-A, B, and C is essential to prevent the state from policing conscience and belief, because as long as the death penalty remains a mandatory or even optional sentence for blasphemy, the laws will continue to serve as a magnet for vigilantes and extortionists. The goal should not merely be to tweak a flawed system but to decouple the state’s legal machinery from religious fervor, ensuring that the law serves to protect the minority and marginalized rather than provide a veneer of legitimacy to their persecutors.
(Niala Mohammad is Director of Research for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate and Cecil Shane Chaudhry is the South Asia Deputy Team Leader at Christian Solidarity Worldwide.)