unaid Hafecz is not just another ordinary accused as in most of` blasphemy cases. He is an idealist in a conservative orthodox society which has no space for logic. Hailing from Rajanpur, he won the gold medal in pre-medical in Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education DG Khan, standing first in the board. In 2003, he joined King Edward Medical College to become a doctor, a dream of many of science students in the country. `He was not interested in pursuing his medical education. Instead, he was more interested in literature and social sciences,` saysone of his close friends who requested not to be named.

In 2006, Hafecz left King Edward, went back to his region and joined Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan to undertake a BA Hons in English Literature.

`It was when I watched Dead Poets Society in my days at medical university that I decided to give up medicine as a profession and opted for a degree in English language and literature. My interest in the subject has been nurtured by the texts I studied like Love in the Time of Cholera, and the movies I watched such as ljazal and Dil Se,` writes Junaid in his personal statement that he sent to the Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi, US.

Hafeez was one of only five students selected for a highlycompetitive exchange programme for America, where he studied theatre, photography and American literature.

For his MPhil thesis, Hafeez chose to decode the layers of Pakistani masculinity through an ethnographic study of masculinity in popular cinema in Multan. He had also written four research papers on cinema, feminism and Seraiki literature and was working on research on feminism, masculinity and film. He had also translated short stories of South Punjab writers into English and wanted to publish an anthology of his translated works. He was a poet as well.

Hafeez started teaching at the BZU as a visiting lecturer in 2011 while also teaching at the College of Design, Multan.

`Many of his colleagues were not happy with him and he was also a victim of peer politics in his department. However, the head of his department supported him in a hostile atmosphere, so his opponents could not do anything to him,` says his friend, hinting at the animosity which resulted in a rightwing religious group at the university working against him.

`He became a victim of polities at the department. New vacancies were going to open at the BZU English Department, and a group of right-wing students with help from those who did not want to see Junaid in the department, implicated him in the case,` says Afiya Zia, a human rights activist, who met Junaid at Sahiwal jail after his arrest.

`Most of blasphemy accused are implicated in fake cases.

Most of the times, there are other ulterior motives behind such cases. The Facebook pages that Junaid was accused ofoperating continued after he was arrested and jailed,` she says.

`The boy is a scholar. When I went to meet him, he had books with him, of philosophy and literature. One of the books I saw was of Tariq Rehman,` Zia says, adding that Hafeez is a teacher and was teaching other inmates at the jail.

She says that though he is mentally a strong young man, but he too must be very concerned after Rashid Rehman`s murder.

`The root of the issue is the law which is misused andabused to implicate people. This practice should be stopped, otherwise, society will have to pay a heavy price for it though we have already paid a heavy price so far,` she says.

Hafecz`s friend says that he was quite religious as well.

`Once he told me how to be a practising Muslim. `Start saying prayers during Ramazan, then it will be your habit` he told me,` says his friend.

`Junaid has his own philosophical views and he is more inclined towards Sufism but it does not mean he is non-religious. He is just more straightforward and daring,` his friend says. E