A lawyer defending a university lecturer accused of blasphemy has been reportedly shot dead by gunmen in Pakistan's Multan city.

According to the BBC, Rashid Rehman was defending Junaid Hafeez, a lecturer at Bahauddin Zakariya University accused by hardline student groups of making derogatory remarks against the Prophet Muhammad in March last year.

Police said that Rehman was sitting in his office when he was shot.

Meanwhile, two of his assistants were also injured during the attack on the lawyer.

Senior police official Zulfiqar Ali reportedly said that Rehman died amid "indiscriminate firing" in his office on Wednesday evening.

He added that the lawyer and his two injured colleagues were rushed to hospital where doctors pronounced Rehman dead upon arrival.

While none of the lawyers were ready to take up his case out of fear of retaliations from extremist religious groups, Rehman, a rights activist and co-ordinator of the HRCP, decided to defend Hafeez despite constant death threats, the report added.