ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday censured Punjab police for failing to safeguard a Hindu temple that was attacked by a mob in central Pakistan on Wednesday, ordering “immediately” that the culprits be arrested and the religious building restored. 

Police said Wednesday’s attack took place in the town of Bhong in Rahim Yar Khan district after a court granted bail to an eight-year-old Hindu boy who allegedly desecrated a religious school earlier this week. The mob damaged statues and burned down the temple’s main door.

Pakistan on Thursday deployed paramilitary forces in Bhong to ensure public safety.

“The temple was attacked. What were the administration and the police doing?” the chief justice of Pakistan, Gulzar Ahmed, questioned during Friday’s hearing, as reported in Pakistani media, ordering that the culprits be immediately arrested.

Inspector General of Police in Punjab, Inam Ghani, replied that the administration’s priority had been to protect 70 Hindu homes around the temple.

“If the commissioner, deputy commissioner and the district police officer can’t perform, then they should be removed,” the chief justice said, adding that the incident had damaged Pakistan’s reputation at an international level. “The police did nothing except watching the spectacle.”

“[A] Hindu temple was demolished. Think [about] what they must have felt. Imagine what would have been the reaction of Muslims had a mosque been demolished,” Ahmed said. 

Temples belonging to the minority Hindu population in Pakistan are often the target of mob violence. In December 2020, a large mob destroyed a century old Hindu temple in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Pakistan ranked the highest globally in incidents of mob violence and criminal charges against those accused of blasphemy, according to a May report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, which surveyed incidents between 2014 and 2018.