A Muslim man was arrested on Monday for vandalizing a Hindu temple in old city area of Karachi, Pakistan. The accused, Muhammad Waleed Shabbir, entered the Narayan Mandir in Narainpura, Ranchore Line area of Karachi in the evening and managed to damage the murti of Maa Durga using a hammer before people got hold of him and handed him over to police.

“Shabbir has been arrested for damaging the statues of the deities. He was arrested on the complaint of a Hindu man, Mukesh Kumar, who with his wife was at the Narayan Mandir for prayers when they saw this man damaging the statues of Hindu deities with a hammer”, a senior police officer, Sarfaraz Nawaz, said.

The accused has been booked under section 427 of the Pakistan Penal Code (mischief) and section 295 of the PPC that deals with blasphemy. A large crowd of Hindus later gathered outside the Eidgah police station demanding protection and exemplary punishment of the accused.

In a video, we can see that the main Maa Durga murti and her tiger mount have been damaged, while a smaller devi murti to the side has been decapitated. People question the attacker on why he committed the hate crime. He replies, “To tell that this is not worthy of ibadat (worship)”

The full video of the incident and subsequent protest can be seen here.

Earlier in October, thieves had desecrated Hanuman Devi Mata Mandir in Sindh province and stolen jewellery and cash worth thousands of rupees. They left behind a message “this is a gift for Hindus on Diwali”

August end saw a temple vandalized and Shri Krishna murti desecrated while Hindus were celebrating Krishna Janmashtami festival in Khipro, Sindh. A trend seems to be emerging of targeting Hindu temples just before festivals. Pakistan’s Punjab province saw the complete demolition of a Ganesha temple by a frenzied Muslim mob in early August. 

The attack on the Narayan mandir in Karachi, a city considered ‘cosmopolitan’ by Pakistani standards, makes it the 11th such attack on Hindu temples in Pakistan since last year.

The institutionalized hatred for Hindus is so deep in Pakistani society, that stray individuals like the current CJI of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed, who inaugurated the rebuilt Shri Param Hans Ji Maharaj temple in Karak, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on the occasion of Diwali and felicitated the Hindu community, have negligible impact.

The man who was Pakistan’s CJI till January 2019, Mian Saqib Nisar, exemplifies the Pakistani Muslim elite. Nisar has such contempt for Hindus that he couldn’t bring himself to even name the community during a speech lauding Aligarh Muslim University founder Syed Ahmed Khan for coming up with the two-nation theory.

As Pakistani journalist @veengasj tweeted about the latest temple desecration, “despite Supreme Court notices and government claims that they protect Temple — nothing has changed. It happens when culprits are allowed to walk free.”

Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan, an ex-cricketer who had a huge fan following in Bharat, has morphed into an Islamic fundamentalist who regularly rants against Bharat and its government, while paying lip service to the suffering Pakistani Hindus. The condition of Hindus and other minorities in the Islamic nation is so bad that the criminal justice system routinely turns a blind eye to crimes like abduction of Hindu and Christian girls for sexual slavery and/or forced conversion and marriage.

Meanwhile, the Anglosphere media outlets like Washington Post whitewash or downplay such atrocities and the mainstream Indian English-language media is not much better.