The historic Krishna Dwara Mandir in Teri village of Karak district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was burned and razed to the ground by a mob of hundreds of people on Wednesday. The Samadhi of Shri Paramahans Ji Maharaj near the temple was vandalised and set on fire too.
The mob claimed that the temple had encroached on extra land.
According to eyewitnesses, the destruction of the temple by the mob went on for hours but the police did not intervene. No case has been registered and neither any arrest made so far in the incident. Videos of the destruction of the Hindu temple are circulating on social media.
Today:
Muslims burning and razing down a Hindu temple in District Karak, KPK province of Pakistan… pic.twitter.com/jwGREz3oqX— #SengeSering ས།ཚ། (@SengeHSering) December 30, 2020
Pakistan’s federal Parliamentary Secretary for Human Rights Lal Chand Malhi strongly condemned the vandalism by, as he called them, “some anti-social elements”.
This is not the first time the temple has been attacked. This same temple was first attacked and demolished in 1997. After intervention by Pakistan’s Supreme Court in 2015, the local Muslim community had finally agreed to the temple’s reconstruction. Despite this, there was a dispute over the land allocated to the temple. This further led to conflicts between the Hindus demanding the temple and the local clerics.
When contacted after the destruction of the temple, Rohit Kumar, a representative of the local Hindu community, told local reporters that the temple had not exceeded the agreed area and that the residents of the area had violated the agreement by devastating the temple.
Hindus are the biggest minority in Pakistan. According to official estimates, 75 lakh Hindus live in Pakistan. The majority of Pakistan’s Hindu population is settled in Sindh province. Hindus in Pakistan bear the brunt of the harassment and persecution perpetrated upon them by the country’s Muslim majority.