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Sagar Arya

Amerjit Deu

Asif Khan

Faryal Khan

Najma Khan

Abid Majid

Mariam Majid

Ayeesha Menon

Aatif Nawaz

Hassani Shapi

John Dryden

Saturday Drama: Blasphemy and the Governor of Punjab

Blasphemy and the Governor of Punjab

08/09/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Drama, Blasphemy and the Governor of Punjab

Gripping account of the murder of Pakistani politician and businessman Salmaan Taseer.

Documentary drama piecing together the extraordinary events surrounding the 2011 assassination of the Governor of Pakistan's Punjab. Starring Sagar Arya, Amerjit Deu, Asif Khan.

On 4th January 2011, self-made millionaire businessman and governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down in the car park of a popular Islamabad market. He had been leading a campaign to amend Pakistan's 
blasphemy laws, after an illiterate 45-year-old Christian woman, Asia Bibi, from a village in his province had been sentenced to death for blasphemy. 

Within hours of his death, a Facebook fan page for the assassin Mumtaz Qadri had over 2000 members, before site administrators shut it down. When Qadri was transferred to jail, he was garlanded with roses by a crowd of lawyers offering to take on his case for free. President Asif Ali Zardari, an old friend of Taseer's, didn't go to the funeral for fear of inflaming public opinion. Leaders of state-funded mosques refused to say funeral prayers for the slain governor. The Interior Minister even gave an impromptu press conference announcing that he too would kill any blasphemer "with his own hands".

Using his extensive contacts in Pakistan, presenter Owen Bennett-Jones has interviewed Taseer's family and friends and the family of the assassin. He has also secured access to court documents including the killer's confession. 

The programme includes both interviews and dramatic reconstructions. 

Presented by Owen Bennett-Jones
Sound Design - Steve Bond

Executive Producer: Jeremy Skeet
Director: John Dryden
A Goldhawk Production for BBC Radio 4.

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