Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Pakistan, where even unproven allegations of insulting Islam have provoked deadly vigilantism.

Police said the “three female students allegedly slaughtered their local female cleric over blasphemy allegations” in Dera Ismail Khan in March 2022.

A district judge “handed down the death penalty to two local madrasa students and a life sentence to one upon proving their involvement in the murder,” local police official Muhammad Haris told AFP.

The pair sentenced to death are aged 23 and 24 whilst the one sentenced to life in jail is 16, he said.

The death penalty is technically allowed in Pakistan – and courts regularly hand down the sentence – but there have been no executions since 2020, according to Amnesty International.

Before that executions of women were not frequent, but many female inmates have languished on death row for years.

Pakistan has been hit by a spate of high-profile blasphemy cases in recent weeks.

In February, police were forced to intervene in the eastern city of Lahore when a woman wearing a shirt adorned with Arabic calligraphy was surrounded by a mob accusing her of blasphemy.

The crowd of men said the clothing depicted the Koran but it was in fact emblazoned with the Arabic word for “beautiful”.

Pakistan’s top Supreme Court judge has also been targeted by veiled death threats after ordering the release of a man accused of disseminating a blasphemous text.