PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) – Pakistani police detained at least 31 people in night raids after a Hindu temple was burned and demolished by a crowd led by hundreds of supporters of a radical Islamist party, officials said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, dozens of Hindus gathered in the southern port city of Karachi to demand the reconstruction of their place of worship.
The destruction of the temple on Wednesday in Karak, a city in the northwest of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, was also condemned by human rights activists and leaders of the Pakistani minority Hindu community.
Local police said they detained 31 people overnight and raids began on Thursday and more raids were carried out to arrest radical cleric Maulana Shareef and other people who participated in or provoked the crowd to demolish the temple.
The attack came after members of the Hindu community received permission from local authorities to renovate the temple. According to police and witnesses, the crowd was led by Shareef and supporters of the radical Pakistani party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam.
Angry about the attack, about 100 members of the Hindu community gathered in Karachi. Among them was Ramesh Kumar, a member of the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.
Kumar, also a Hindu leader, told protesters he received assurances from the government that his temple would be rebuilt and that those responsible for the attack would be arrested and punished.
Kumar said he received a call from Prime Minister Imran Khan and Khan expressed his sympathy. He said Khan assured him that all necessary measures will be taken to ensure the protection of minorities and their places of worship.
Kumar said Pakistan’s Supreme Court had requested a report from authorities on the attack, which also damaged a shrine located next to the temple. “We are very sad, we have a broken heart,” he said.
Kumar said the temple itself had been damaged in 1997 and local clerics linked to Wednesday’s attack had also incited Muslims earlier. He claimed that Shareef, the local cleric who led the attack, had fled with gunmen in his hands and authorities ordered troops to capture them.
Earlier, Pakistani Minister of Religious Affairs Noorul Haq Qadri described the attack on the temple as a “conspiracy against sectarian harmony”. He took to Twitter on Thursday, saying attacks on places of worship of minority religious groups are not allowed in Islam and “protecting the religious freedom of minorities is a religious, constitutional, moral and national responsibility.”
The incident comes weeks after the government allowed Hindu residents to build a new temple in Islamabad on the recommendation of a council of clergy.
Although Muslims and Hindus live together peacefully in Pakistan, there have been other attacks on Hindu temples in recent years. Most of Pakistan’s minority Hindus emigrated to India in 1947, when the British government divided India.
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Farooq reported from Karachi, Pakistan.