evidence: On February 11, 2023, an angry mob stormed a police station in Nankana Sahib, in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab, where a person accused of blasphemy had taken refuge. It was reported afterwards, unfortunately, that the accused person, Waris Issa, was brutally lynched to death and set on fire by the violent mob as a result of the police’s failure to quell the mob in time and rescue the victim. While such incidents are not new in Pakistan, the recent rise in violent extremism in the country is alarming and symbolic of the state’s failure in keeping the society peaceful. In 2021, a Sri Lankan citizen, Priyantha Kumar, working as a factory manager in Pakistan’s Sialkot city was lynched and his was body burned by an angry mob in a cold-blooded manner. As happens in almost all such cases, the unfortunate victim was accused of blasphemy, however, without any evidence to that effect.