A Sikh ‘hakeem’ (Unani medicine practitioner) was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on Thursday in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, police said.
”Hakeem” Sardar Satnam Singh (Khalsa) was at his clinic when attackers barged into his cabin and opened fire at him. He received four bullets and died instantly.
The killers managed to escape from the crime scene. The reason behind the murder has not been ascertained yet. Satnam Singh was a well-known figure in the Sikh community of Peshawar, and was running his clinic ‘Dharmandar Pharmacy’ on Charsadda Road. Peshawar is the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province.
In 2018, Charanjit Singh, a prominent Sikh community member, was killed by unknown men in Peshawar. Similarly, news channel anchor Ravinder Singh was killed in 2020 in the city. In 2016, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf National Assembly member Soren Singh was killed in Peshawar. These are just some of the targeted killings of at least a dozen Sikhs since 2014.
A 2018 article published after Charanjit Singh’s murder tells us –
“Sikhs were not included in last year’s population census and there is no hard data on their numbers but social worker Radesh Singh estimated that more than sixty percent of Peshawar’s 30,000 Sikhs had left for other parts of Pakistan or migrated to neighbouring Bharat in the last four years…“There are probably less than 8,000 Sikhs left in Peshawar now,” he said.
…“I believe a genocide of Sikhs is taking place here,” Baba Gurpal Singh, a community spokesperson, told…
“My ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years alongside Muslims but now we are being wiped out because we have a different religion, because we look different,” said Balbir Singh a young volunteer with the Pakistan Sikh Council.
Sikhs are constantly battling with the Pakistan government for ownership of hundreds of gurdawaras. Under an agreement signed between Pakistan and Bharat after the partition of Bharat in 1947, religious lands and temples cannot be sold. And yet, many lands allotted for Sikh temples and crematoriums have been disposed off by the Evacuee Trust Property Board, a body responsible for the maintenance of properties abandoned by people who left for Bharat during Partition.
“I believe very strongly in my faith but I don’t want to die, so I cut my hair and stopped wearing my turban one year ago,” 20-year-old Paldeep Singh said
Things have to change. Otherwise in a few years, there will be no Sikhs left in Pakistan,” Taranjeet said.”
It is sad that despite this state of affairs, most Sikh organizations and parties such as SGPC, Akali Dal have opposed the CAA law which offers expedited citizenship to persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Sikhs and Hindus have been completely wiped out from Afghanistan with the few thousand there fleeing to Bharat after Taliban grabbed power.
It is even more ironic that many affluent Sikhs settled overseas in the Anglosphere support the Khalistan movement and consider the Islamo-fascist Pakistan as their ally!
