The minarets of a worship place of the minority Ahmadi community were demolished by police in Pakistan’s Punjab province after a radical Islamist party threatened to attack it, officials said on Saturday.
Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) on Friday gave a warning to police to either demolish the minarets of the worship place of Ahmadis at the Kala Gujran in Jehlum district of Punjab, some 225 kilometres from Lahore, or it would attack it, a Punjab government official told PTI on Saturday.
”Police summoned the Ahmadi leaders of the area and asked them to demolish the minarets of their worship place as they could not build them under law or they would themselves demolish the place,” the official said.
On Friday night, a police team raided the Ahmadi’s worship place and demolished it, he said.
Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan Punjab official Amir Mahmood told PTI that a campaign against Ahmadi worship places had been launched in Jehlum by TLP leader Asim Ashfaq Rizvi.
Mahmood said Rizvi in different public meetings had threatened to attack the Ahmadi places in Jehlum if the police did not destroy them by the 10th Muharram (end of July).
Rizvi had threatened that the radical Islamists would march towards the Ahmadi worship places and destroy them.
”Instead of protecting the Ahmadis, the police brought down the minarets of the Ahmadis’ place of worship to please the hate mongers and extremist elements. This situation is unfortunate and a clear violation of the rights of the Ahmadi community,” Mahmood said.
He said a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Tasadduq Hussain Jilani in 2014 had ordered the formation of a special police force for the protection of places of worship of minorities.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI)