A senior Christian pastor reportedly shot dead in prison in Pakistan is “alive and well”, the news agency Fides has reported.
Zafar Bhatti, president of the Jesus World Mission and a champion of the rights of the country’s Christian minority, has been imprisoned in Adyala jail in Rawalpindi in northern Punjab on charges of blasphemy.
Reports that he was shot dead in an attack in his cell last week by a prison guard have been contradicted by the Justice and Peace Commission of the Pakistani Bishops.
Although Mr Bhatti’s cell-mate, 70-year-old Briton Muhammad Asghar, was seriously wounded in a gun attack in their cell, Cecil Shane Chaudhry, Executive Director of the Commission, told Fides: "I can confirm that some members of my office, who went to Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, spoke with members of the pastor’s family and then with Zafar himself."
Mr Asghar, originally of Edinburgh, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, according to the news agency Reuters.
Zafar Bhatti had been accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammed’s mother in a text message in 2012 and sentenced to death. His family said police investigations showed the phone was registered to someone else. They and the human rights organisation Life for All had campaigned for his release.
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