An elderly Sikh couple who served as caretakers of a gurdwara in Mardan town of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were shot dead by unidentified gunmen on June 17. The administration is taking it as a targeted attack on the religious site and directed the police to conduct an investigation.
The deceased were identified as 70-year-old Jagannath and his wife, Asa Wanti, who were responsible for the security and care of the gurdwara. The couple had lived at the gurdwara premises, as is customary for caretakers of such religious sites, for the last 20 years, according to a voicepk.net report.
The incident occurred in the Babu Mohallah locality of Mardan, approximately 60 km north-west of Peshawar city. The gurdwara is situated in the Khwaja Ganj Bazaar area of the city. Hate crimes like this are growing all over Pakistan against minorities, be they Sikhs, Ahmadiyas, Christians or Hindus. In almost all such cases, the investigations remain incomplete as the police show little interest in pursuing any leads. As such, the perpetrators are never brought to justice and the number of victims continues growing.
Assailants Flee After Doing Murders
According to information available in public domain and that shared by the police, the assailants opened fire inside the gurdwara, resulting in the deaths of Jagannath and his wife. The assailants then managed to flee the scene after committing the crime. A Rescue 1122 medical team shifted the bodies to the District Headquarters Hospital for legal formalities and further investigation. According to a relative of the couple, the attack was completely unprecedented.
“We have around 50 to 52 homes of Sikh families surrounding the gurdwara in Mardan,” a relative told Voicepk in an interview and on condition of anonymity. “But we have excellent and cordial relations with all the people living around us who belong to different faiths. In the history of Mardan this is the first incident of violence of this kind. Everyone is in shock as to how this even happened.”
He specified that there was nothing in the background for it to be an act of enmity. “Of course there must be some reason which we will only know once the investigation brings things to light. But for example there was no politics involved, or anything else.”
The couple had devoted their lives to taking care of the gurdwara for the last 20 years. The relative said that at the time the incident occurred there were only three people, the caretaker couple and a third man who was reciting the Guru Granth Sahib. He said that the man was unaware of the shooting as the couple were elsewhere within the building when it happened. “Such incidents have taken place in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, in Buner for example, but that has been a long time ago,” he said. “That was because of a political reason. In Peshawar too it has happened. But never in Mardan.”
After this attack, there is fear among the Sikh families living in the area that Mardan also is no longer safe for them as they deemed it so far. Till now, there has been no official statement released by the authorities in KP. Voicepk also tried to contact the Punjab Minister of Minority Affairs, Sardar Ramesh Singh Arora, who is from the Sikh community. However, there was no response from Arora to repeated calls and messages.
Police Claims It Will Arrest Perpetrators
The police said efforts were underway to ascertain the motive behind the attack and nab those involved. Senior law enforcement moved quickly to the site, District Police Officer (DPO) Masood Ahmed reached the crime scene soon after the incident, along with SSP Investigation Maria Mustafa, ASP City, SHO Hoti, and other senior officers to examine evidence.
DPO Ahmed later also visited the District Headquarters Hospital and briefed officials there. As of now, the accused remain at large. Authorities have pledged that all available resources are being deployed to track down those responsible.
In the meantime, no group has claimed responsibility for the killing, and neither has any motive been officially established. Police are pursuing multiple lines of inquiry simultaneously, however no arrests have been made.
The story was picked up within hours by several news agencies and major regional outlets across many countries in South Asia. The Tribune newspaper of India, one of the subcontinent’s oldest English-language newspapers, tagged the story under #HateCrime, #PakistanViolence, and ReligiousPersecution. It broadly reflects how the wider Sikh community and Indian media are contextualising the killing. According to them, it is not an isolated crime but a part of a sustained pattern of violence against religious minorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
It needs to be mentioned here that during the past decade or so, there has been a sharp spike in the incidence of hate crimes against minorities in the province. During this period, the number of families of minorities has gone down substantially as they have moved out to urban centres. The rural areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been purged of the minorities altogether.
Significant Broader Pattern of Hate Crimes
This attack is the latest in a long line of targeted killings of Sikhs in Khybder Pakhtunkhwa. In May 2022, two Sikh shopkeepers, Saljeet Singh and Ranjeet Singh, were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Peshawar’s Sarband area by two bike-borne assailants who fled after the attack. No group claimed responsibility for that killing either. Till date, nobody has been arrested and nothing is known regarding the assailants.
That incident had triggered an international diplomatic response with India registering a strong protest with Pakistan over the continued targeting of minority community members. Besides, the Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), the apex gurdwara management body, had demanded that Pakistan should ensure the security and safety of Sikhs living there.
The Mardan attack follows an almost identical pattern: an unguarded religious site, a defenceless minority individual or couple as victims, assailants who vanish without a trace, and a motive that investigators struggle to pin down publicly. If the past record is anything to go by, the assailants will remain untraced this time too.
