A Pakistani cleric, who threatened the world's youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai with a suicide attack during a speech, has been arrested, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Mufti Sardar Ali Haqqani has been taken into custody from the Pizo area of  Lakki Marwat district, Tribune reported.

The complaint registered at the Pizo police station claimed that the cleric delivered the hate speech in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northwestern Pakistan.

The video of the speech widely circulated on social media showed him standing armed on the stage and asking people to take the law into their own hands and carry out a suicide attack on Malala, who now stays in the UK.

“He could be heard saying that he would carry out a suicide attack on Malala when she visits Pakistan. This highly enraged people,” read the FIR.

Police officials told The Express Tribune that the cleric was booked for inciting hatred.

The suspect had previously mocked Covid-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs) in another video after which he was arrested by police.

Later, the cleric released a video, asking people to follow the Coronavirus SOPs.

Malala, 23, has been a human rights and female education activist since her pre-teens, receiving plaudits from across the world, but simultaneously angering Muslim fundamentalists.

When she was just 15 years old, Malala was shot in the head by a Muslim hardline outfit Tehrik-i-Taliban  Pakistan gunman while riding a bus home in Swat Valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, from school.

 She was airlifted to the UK, where Malala was treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. She completed her graduation last year from Oxford University.

(SAM)