While the entire world was battling Corona pandemic during lockdown, Islamist elements in Pakistan took advantage of the situation to further target the minority Hindus and their faith in Pakistan. OpIndia reports that a pre-partition Hanuman Mandir in Pakistan’s Lyari district was demolished by a builder on Sunday. The temple was located on the Fida Hussain Sheikh Road in Lyari in Karachi.
Aggrieved Hindus assembled at the site of the temple on Monday and expressed their anger and anguish at the demolition of the temple. The Karachi Police sealed the construction site after the temple was razed. Report in the Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune dated August 18, says that Lyari’s assistant commissioner Abdul Karim Memon who reached the site with the police informed that a probe has been initiated and the site, where a residential building is to be erected.
A resident Hindu named Heera Lal spoke to the media and expressed his grief while informing that the Hindus in the area had been given assurance by the builder that the temple will not be harmed. However, the assurance was to hoodwink the Hindus. Heera Lal was one amongst the 18 Hindu families living near the temple. He further added that the demolition had taken place late on Sunday evening.
Speaking to The Express Tribune, Mohammad Irshad Baloch, an elderly onlooker, said “It is an injustice as a place of worship has been destroyed. It was an old temple. We have been seeing it since we were children.”
Haresh, another resident explained “No one was allowed to visit the temple during the lockdown. He [the builder] exploited the situation [of the pandemic] and demolished our place of worship while we could not visit it,” he cried, demanding that the temple be restored. He too claimed the builder had promised the area’s Hindu residents that the temple would not be demolished, adding that all the families living around it were even assured of alternative housing.
Speaking to The Express Tribune, Mohan Lal, a Hindu activist, accused the builder of threatening members of the minority community who had assembled at the site and highlighted the temple’s demolition. “We tried to enter the temple but were denied entry by the builder,” he narrated, adding that the man had deceived the residents living there. “We will not allow anyone to demolish our places of worship in this manner,” he added.
Opposition and demolition of Hindu temples is not new in Pakistan and Hindus have continued to suffer ever since Imran Khan came to power. It can be recalled that last month, the construction of a new Sri Krishna temple in Islamabad had to be stopped after radical Islamic elements razed the boundary wall of the temple to the ground. Videos of Islamists dismantling the temporary boundary wall and speaking to the camera in an agitated manner had gone viral on social media.
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