Pak senate junks bill on minorities safety

Amritsar: Pakistani senate panel rejected a bill that called for giving the minority communities protection against religious violence. Intelligence sources said Pakistan’s Hindus had demanded this bill after the desecration of the Karak temple.
The Protection of the Rights of Religious Minorities Bill was presented by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senator Javed Abbasi, who has a good influence among the minorities of India’s neighbouring country and demands free access for them to their religious places. After the standing committee on religious affairs and interfaith harmony turned down the bill on February 3, Pakistan Peoples Party’s Hindu senator Krishna Kumari walked out of the meeting.
A Hindu member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, who didn’t wish to give be named, said: “Senator Maulana Abdul Ghaffar Haideri of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl chaired the meeting where the committee “took a frivolous’ plea that the minorities enjoyed unprecedented freedom in Pakistan and the attacks on them were stray incidents”.
In December 2020, a Muslim mob led reportedly by an Islamist cleric vandalised the smadh (tomb) of Sri Paramhans Maharaj and the Krishan Dwara temple in Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan’s northwest frontier province. The demand for the minorities’ protection bill grew stronger after the incident.
All-Pakistan Hindu Panchayat (APHP) general secretary Ravi Dawani said: “Hindu doctor Ashok Kumar of Bhan Syedabad town in Jamshoro district of Pakistan’s Sindh province was arrested on the false charges of poisoning a 20-year-old medical student, Sana.
Dr Ashok denied any wrongdoing and arranged to send the CCTV footage of his clinic to the All-Pakistan Hindu Panchayat as evidence.” The bill can protect the minorities from similar false cases, the sources claim.