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Around 1,500 folks descended Wednesday on the temple — in a distant village of northeast Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province — after protesting in opposition to renovations being made to an adjoining constructing owned by a Hindu group.
They used sledgehammers to knock down partitions earlier than setting the constructing ablaze.
“We regret the damage caused by the attack,” mentioned Kamran Bangash, the provincial info minister.
“The chief minister has ordered the reconstruction of the temple and adjoining house,” he instructed AFP.
Construction will begin as quickly as potential with the help of the Hindu group, he mentioned, including safety can be supplied on the web site.
Pakistan’s prime court docket has ordered authorities to submit a report on the temple’s destruction.
Discrimination and violence in opposition to spiritual minorities are widespread in Pakistan, the place Muslims make up 97 % of the inhabitants and Hindus round two %.
The temple, which was destroyed in related circumstances in 1997 after which rebuilt, is positioned some 160 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Peshawar, the provincial capital.
While no Hindus stay within the space, devotees typically go to the temple and its shrine to pay homage to the Hindu saint Shri Paramhans, who died there earlier than the 1947 partition of India that gave start to Pakistan.
District police chief Irfanullah Khan instructed AFP round 45 folks had been detained in reference to the incident — together with a neighborhood cleric, Maulana Sharif, who’s accused of inciting the mob.
Khan added police are additionally searching for Maulana Mirza Aqeem, the district chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), one in every of Pakistan’s largest Islamist events.
Last yr, the United States positioned Pakistan on an inventory of “countries of particular concern” for spiritual freedom violations.
Watch Angry mob demolishes Hindu temple in Pakistan, a number of arrested
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