A radical religious leader, who is a suspect in the killing of a doctor on blasphemy charges last month in Pakistan's Sindh province, has been granted protective bail by the provincial high court.

Pir Umar Jan Sirhindi, the chief of the Sindh chapter of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), was on Monday given 10 days protective bail in a case involving the fake encounter of Dr Shahnawaz Kunbhar who allegedly posted blasphemous material on his social media page, a charge he denied.

Kunbhar, who was forced to flee to Karachi, was on September 19 shot dead during an alleged gun battle with the police in the Mirpurkhas area of Sindh, authorities said.

Sirhindi, DIG Javed Jiskani, then SSP-Mirpurkhas Asad Choudhary, SSP-Umerkot Asif Raza Baloch, and several others have been booked in the case filed on the complaint of Ibrahim Kunbhar, Shahnawaz's brother-in-law.

Ibrahim said in his complaint that his brother-in-law was murdered on the pretext of having committed blasphemy in Umerkot.

He alleged Sirhindi led a big rally in Umerkot and forced the police to arrest Shahnawaz, who later surrendered to police but was killed in a staged encounter.

A mob led by Sirhindi, Ahmed Shahani and Riaz Panhwar allegedly snatched the body from the police and set it on fire, drawing criticism from human and civil rights organisations as well as citizens.

Sirhindi, a dreaded name among the Hindu community in Sindh, is also accused in numerous cases related to the abduction of minor and teenage Hindu girls who are forcefully converted to Islam and then married off to older Muslim men.

Sirhindi told the media that he played an important and impartial role in stopping the enraged mob from damaging government and private properties when violent protests erupted in Umerkot.

Several religious leaders have asked the government to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into the incident and its aftermath, warning the state to not implicate scholars and religious leaders in false cases to discredit them.

The religious scholars said otherwise, they would be forced to take extreme steps.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.