Police on Thursday said they had arrested eight more suspects in connection with Mashal Khan lynching case bringing the total number of people arrested to 32.

Mashal Khan, a journalism student, was stripped, beaten, shot, and thrown from the second floor of his hostel at the Abdul Wali Khan University in the conservative northwestern town of Mardan by a large mob.

Graphic video footage from the crime scene showed dozens of men outside the hostel kicking and hurling projectiles at a body sprawled on the ground.

Mushtaq Ghani, Information Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said the government had also requested Peshawar High Court to conduct a judicial probe into the incident.

Students had previously complained to university authorities about Khan’s alleged secular and liberal views and Khan had been in a heated debate during a class the day he was killed.

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive charge in conservative Muslim Pakistan, and can carry the death penalty. Even unproven allegations can cause mob lynchings and violence.

At least 65 people have been murdered by vigilantes over blasphemy allegations since 1990.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has urged that all those involved in the lynching be brought to justice.

“The state’s abject failure to protect Mashal Khan’s right to life has created great panic and horror among students and academia. Unless all those who played any part in Mashal’s brutal murder are brought to justice, such barbarity will only spread,” it said.

At his funeral, Khan’s father said he hoped his son’s murder would “evoke realisation among people that killing an innocent is a sin”.