Mob assaults, units ablaze Hindu temple in northwestern Pakistan

A mob in northwestern Pakistan attacked and set ablaze a century-old Hindu temple on Wednesday, officers mentioned, prompting condemnations from the Muslim-majority nation’s Hindu group.

Hindus are the most important non-Muslim majority within the nation, which received independence from British rule in 1947, when the subcontinent used to be partitioned into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India.

Movies made through locals on the scene and shared with Reuters confirmed a crowd breaking aside blocks of the temple construction’s partitions the use of stones and sledgehammers, as darkish smoke from a big fire billowed into the sky.

Native Muslim clerics had organised what they instructed police can be a calm protest towards the alleged growth of the temple, situated in a the town in Karak district, in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Rahmatullah Wazir, a police officer within the the town, instructed Reuters.

He added that clerics main the protest began “provocative speeches”, following which the gang attacked the temple.

“It used to be a mob after which no one used to be there to prevent them from harmful the temple,” Wazir mentioned, including that many of the construction were broken.

District police leader Irfanullah Khan instructed Reuters 9 other people were arrested on suspicion of collaborating within the assault.

The temple used to be first constructed within the early 1900s as a shrine, however the native Hindu group left in 1947 and through 1997 the web site were taken over through native Muslims.

In 2015, Pakistan’s Superb Courtroom ordered it’s passed again to the Hindu group and the shrine rebuilt, given that it might now not be expanded sooner or later.

The spokesman of the provincial govt didn’t reply to Reuters’ requests for remark.