ISLAMABAD: Gunmen shot dead a Sikh man and his wife, who were caretakers of a gurdwara, inside the worship place in Pakistan’s northwestern Mardan district, police said on Thursday.
The attack occurred at the gurdwara located in the Babu Mohallah area of Mardan’s Khwaja Ganj Bazaar on Wednesday, according to initial police report.
It comes amid a surge in militancy in the South Asian country, including an attack on a Shia mosque in the federal capital of Islamabad, in recent months.
No group claimed Wednesday’s attack.
“Police was deputed outside the Gurdwara but the incident occurred inside,” Mardan police spokesman Muhammad Faheem told Arab News on Thursday.
“However, two policemen were suspended after the incident.”
Police have lodged a complaint over the killings under the anti-terrorism law, while a joint investigation team has been set up to probe the killings.
“The investigations are going on and law enforcement officials are using modern technology and CCTV [footage] to track down the perpetrators of the incident,” Faheem said.
“Culprits will be apprehended soon.”
According to the latest digital census conducted in 2023, over 96 percent of Pakistan’s population is Muslim, with the remaining four percent comprising 5.2 million Hindus, 3.3 million Christians, 15,992 Sikhs and others.
In the past, the country has seen incidents of violence against members of minority communities, though these incidents have declined in recent years.
In April 2023, gunmen shot dead a Sikh man in the northwestern city of Peshawar, while another Sikh man was killed by unknown assailants in a drive-by shooting in the eastern city of Lahore in May that year, police said. A third Sikh man was also killed in Peshawar in June 2023.
Most Sikhs migrated to neighboring India in 1947, the year British rule of the subcontinent ended and Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims in the region. But thousands stayed in Pakistan, where they generally live peacefully but isolated attacks on Sikhs, Christians and other minorities have continued.
