PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) – Pakistani police have arrested at least 31 people in overnight raids after a Hindu temple was set on fire and demolished by a mob led by hundreds of supporters of a radical Islamic party, officials said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, dozens of Hindus gathered in the southern port city of Karachi to demand the rebuilding of their place of worship.
The destruction of the temple on Wednesday in Karak, a town in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, also drew condemnation of human rights activists and leaders of Pakistan’s Hindu minority community.
Local police said they detained 31 people overnight, and Thursday’s raids and several raids were arresting radical cleric Maulana Shareef and others who attended 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 Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party in Pakistan.
Furious at 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 that he had received assurances from the government that their 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 measures would 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 an altar near the temple. “We are very sad, our hearts are broken,” he said.
Kumar said the same temple was damaged in 1997 and local clerics linked to Wednesday’s attack had incited Muslims earlier. He claimed that Shareef, the local cleric who led the attack, fled with armed men and authorities ordered troops to capture them.
Earlier, Pakistani Minister of Religious Affairs Noorul Haq Qadri called the attack on the temple “a conspiracy against sectarian harmony.” He took to Twitter on Thursday, saying that attacks on places of worship of minority religious groups are not allowed in Islam and that “protecting the religious freedom of minorities is our religious, constitutional, moral and national responsibility.”
The incident comes weeks after the government allowed Hindus to build a new temple in Islamabad on the recommendation of a council of clerics.
Although Muslims and Hindus generally live together peacefully in Pakistan, there have been other attacks on Hindu temples in recent years. Most Pakistani minority Hindus migrated to India in 1947, when India was divided by the British government.
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Farooq reported from Karachi, Pakistan.