Young Sikh shopping for his wedding shot dead in Peshawar in Sunni Pakistan
A young Pakistani Sikh who had recently returned to the country from abroad for his wedding was killed late Saturday evening by unknown gunmen in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police confirmed on Sunday.
The killing comes days after a mob attack on Gurdwara Nankana Sahib near Lahore.
Parvinder Singh (25) had come to Peshawar from his native Chakesar town, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Shangla district, to shop for his wedding which was to be next month.
Harmeet Singh, his brother and a journalist by profession, said his younger brother ran a small business in Malaysia and had arrived in Pakistan last month. “Last night one of the assailants called me from Parvinder’s phone and said that they had killed my brother,” Harmeet said, adding that he had immediately informed the police about the incident. “The problem here with us (minorities) is that we are very vulnerable. Police stations do not register our complaints unless they receive orders from their top bosses,” Harmeet said.
In Chandigarh, reacting to the murder, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh tweeted, “Shocked & anguished over killing of Sikh youth in #Pakistan, coming on heels of #NankanaSahibAttack. @ImranKhanPTI govt must ensure thorough investigation & strict punishment for the culprits. This is the time to act on what you preach.”
Parvinder’s bullet-riddled body was recovered from an area in the jurisdiction of Chamkani police station in the suburbs of Peshawar on Sunday morning. His body was then taken to a hospital for a post-mortem examination. “An unknown person killed the youth and informed his family about the death through his mobile phone. We are investigating the case but cannot rule out personal enmity as the cause,” the police said.
Harmeet, however, blamed the government for failing to provide security to the handful of minority families left in Shangla. “Every year the government receives huge funds from abroad for the safety of the minorities. Instead of providing security, they hand over to us the dead bodies of our loved ones,” the victim’s brother said.
“The government needs to realise that before the remaining members of the minority communities, including Sikhs, Hindus and Christians, leave Pakistan that they are the beauty of the country,” he said, denouncing the government for proclaiming to the world that the minorities were safe in Pakistan.
The remote district of Shangla in Pakistan’s northwest was once home to a significant number of Sikh families. Several local Sikhs told TOI that around 40 Sikh families lived in Shangla 10 years ago but now only five families resided there. “These families are in fact fighting against the odds to stay connected to their native land. Our community centre had been forcibly turned into a public health facility,” one of them said while speaking to TOI outside Khyber Medical College, where Parvinder’s body was take for an autopsy.
When contacted, the Sikh member of Pakistan Punjab’s provincial assembly, Mahindar Pall Singh, said he was yet to get details of the incident.
In May 2018, a prominent Sikh leader of Peshawar, Charanjit Singh, had been shot dead at his shop.
