Acting fast on an issue that could potentially send political and communal tempers soaring, Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the immediate arrest of the culprits and reconstruction of a Hindu temple desecrated by a Muslim mob in a conservative town of eastern Punjab.

Two days after the attack on the temple in Bhong town - in Rahim Yar Khan district and some 590 km from Lahore – Pakistan’s apex court took suo motu notice of the incident saying it had damaged the country’s reputation at the international level and censured the Punjab police for failing to protect the Hindu shrine.

Paramilitary personnel has been deployed in Bhong to prevent any more breach of peace in the aftermath of the incident, the likes of which have led to volatile repercussions in the past in the sub-continent, where religion is a sensitive issue.

On Wednesday, hundreds of people had vandalized the temple of Lord Ganesha and blocked the Sukkur-Multan Motorway (M-5) after a nine-year-old Hindu boy — who allegedly desecrated a local seminary — was granted bail by a local court.

An angry Indian government had on Thursday lodged a strong protest with Islamabad and summoned the Pakistan High Commissioner to India and said it had reports that Hindu homes in the vicinity of the temple were also attacked.

Referring to social media posts, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi described the reports of the violence and the desecration of the idols as “disturbing”.

“The mob attacked the temple, desecrated the holy idols and set fire to the premises,’ said Bagchi at a press conference in New Delhi.

The apex judiciary took up the matter after patron-in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council, Dr. Ramesh Kumar, called on Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed to draw his attention to the incident.

The CJP had summoned Punjab’s chief secretary and Inspector General of Police (IGP) Inam Ghani to appear before the court along with a report on the incident.

"The temple was attacked. What were the administration and the police doing?" the chief justice questioned during the hearing and pulled up the police for lacking in “professionalism”.

Ghani replied that the assistant commissioner and assistant superintendent of police were present at the scene. "The administration's priority was to protect 70 Hindu homes around the temple," Ghani said.

He also told the court that terrorism clauses had been added in the first information report.

"If the commissioner, deputy commissioner and the DPO can't perform, then they should be removed," the chief justice remarked, adding "The police did nothing except [for] watching the spectacle."

Upon being told that no arrests were made in the case so far, Justice Qazi Amin said: "The police failed in fulfilling its responsibility."

Justice Amin added that even if arrests were made, the police would release the suspects on bail and try to make the parties reconcile.

"[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," the chief justice remarked.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has condemned the attack on the temple and asked the Inspector General of Punjab to get the culprits arrested and initiate action in the case of any police negligence. He also promised to rebuild the temple.

The court has also ordered that peace and religious harmony committees be formed in villages.

The Hindus, who constituted around 14 percent of the population in West Punjab  (present Pakistan) when India was partitioned in 1947, now form a little over two percent of the total population.

The majority of the Hindus left Pakistan for India in the immediate aftermath of the partition, and the migration has continued through the decades.

In the past also, Hindu temples had come under attack in several places of Pakistan, with the minority community complaining of forcible conversion of Hindu girls to Islam.

(SAM)