A 59-year-old man from the persecuted minority Ahmadi community has been shot dead by unidentified gunmen apparently for his religious beliefs in the Pakistan's Punjab province, the fourth such killing in a month in the province.
Basharat Ahmad, a resident of Khanpur's Green Town area, some 400 kilometres from Lahore, was returning home on a motorcycle yesterday when unidentified gunmen intercepted him and shot at him. He died on the spot, police said.
"It appears to be a faith-driven incident as the victim had no enmity with anyone. The assailants fled without touching the victim's mobile phone and Rs 15,000 cash," said Saleemuddin, Jamaat-i-Ahmadiyya Pakistan spokesperson.
He said this was the fourth incident in the last one month or so in which an Ahmadi community member had been killed in Punjab, country's second largest province.
Advocate Malik Saleem Latif was killed in Nankana Sahib, while Ashfaq Ahmad and Professor Tahira Parveen Malik were killed in Lahore.
Saleemuddin said the propagation of hate material against the community was going on unchecked and has been one of the main reasons for such attacks.
He said the government had failed to rein in those elements spreading hate openly against the Ahmadi community.
He lamented that not much seems to have been done to check the practice under the National Action Plan and also demanded that the perpetrators be arrested without delay.
Militant organisation Lashkar-e-Jhanghvi had earlier claimed the the responsibility for killing Latif and Ahmad, saying it had sent "infidels" to hell.
The killing of Ahmad puts the spotlight back on Pakistan's problem of Ahmadis' persecution. The issue is deep-rooted and dates back to pre-Partition of India.
In 2014, 11 Pakistani members of the Ahmadi community were reportedly murdered. At least six Ahmadis were killed in Pakistan in 2016 for their religious beliefs.
In 1984, Ahmadis were restricted from "misusing" the epithets, descriptions, titles reserved for certain holy personages or places of Islamic origins. They could not call themselves Muslim or propagate their faith.
In 1974, the then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's regime amended the constitution to include the definition of a Muslim and listed groups that were consider non-Muslims.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
