News for July 20, 2026
Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquits all three men convicted of burning Christian couple alive in brick kiln
A Christian couple falsely accused of desecrating the Quran were beaten by a mob and thrown into a burning brick kiln in 2014. Twelve years later, not a single person has been held accountable for their deaths. Pakistan’s Supreme Court on July 9 acquitted the last three men convicted in the lynching of Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife Shama Bibi, overturning their death sentences and closing the case with zero convictions.
The three-member bench, headed by Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad Khan and joined by Justices Jamal Khan Mandokhail and Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi, ruled that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The court also dismissed an appeal by the Punjab Province government seeking to reverse the earlier acquittal of 102 other defendants by the Lahore High Court.
