World

After Sikh man’s killing, community members start moving out of KPK: Report

The latest to be killed was Satnam Singh, a Unani medicine practitioner, who had migrated to KPK's capital Peshawar from Orakzai district hoping for a safe life,

The targeted killings of Sikhs in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province have increased significantly in the last few years, local media reported. According to a report in The Daily Wattan, the Sikh community in KPK has started migrating to other parts of Pakistan in hope of safety.

The latest to be killed was Satnam Singh, a Unani medicine practitioner, who had migrated to KPK’s capital Peshawar from Orakzai district hoping for a safe life, the publication reported. The 45-year-old was gunned down at his clinic on Thursday by unidentified men, police said.

He was hit by four bullets and died instantly. The killers escaped from the scene.

Singh was a well-known member of the Sikh community and ran Dharmandar Pharmacy on Charsadda Road in Peshawar, the capital of KPK. He had lived in the city for the past 20 years.

In a message posted on social media late on Thursday, Islamic State-Khorasan claimed responsibility for the killing.

The Daily Wattan report claimed that as many as 13 Sikhs have been killed in KPK by terrorists in the last six-seven years. Dr Swaran Singh, former advisor to ex-KPK chief minister Parvez Khan Khattak, was one of them. Charanjit Singh, a prominent Sikh community leader, was killed by unidentified men in 2018, while television anchor Ravinder Singh was killed in the city last year.

Due to rising number of such incidents, the families of the minority community have started shifting to Hasanabdal, Lahore, and Nanakna Sahib which have a sizeable Sikh population, reported The Daily Wattan.

Islamic State-Khorasan, which is based in Afghanistan, has stepped up attacks in several Afghan cities since the Taliban marched into Kabul on August 15. It claimed the deadly suicide attack at Kabul airport on August 26 that killed nearly 170 Afghans and 13 US military personnel.

Source
Hindustan Times

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button