Islamabad High Court in Pakistan on Tuesday dropped all charges against the 14-year old girl who was accused of blasphemy for burning pages of Quran.
In an incident that evoked worldwide outrage, Rimsha Masih, a mentally challenged minor girl, was arrested on August 16 on blasphemy charges for burning Quran pages as claimed by a Muslim cleric.
Rimsha’s lawyers said that she was falsely implicated due to evidence planted by Khalid Chishti, the Imam of the mosque in the low-income Mehria Jaffar neighborhood of Islamabad.
Chishti faced arrest after a man testified that he had seen the cleric stuffing pages of the Quran in a bag belonging to Rimsha.
Rimsha was arrested on August 16 after an angry mob surrounded a police station and demanded that action be taken against her.
Rimsha spent three weeks of judicial remand at the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.
She was released on bail on September 8 and she along with her family was sent to an undisclosed location as they received death threats.
An official medical board that examined Rimsha concluded that she was about 14 years old and that her mental development did not correspond to her age.
Rights groups have warned that Pakistan’s controversial Blasphemy Law is often used to settle personal scores or persecute minorities like Christians.
