PESHAWAR: Many families of minorities in Pakistan’s restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have migrated to other parts of the country or abroad due to the worsening security situation, according to a religious scholar and Hindu rights activist.
Haroon Sarabdiyal of the Pakistan Hindu Mandir Management Committee said that Hindu, Sikh and Christian families mostly shifted to the provinces of Punjab and Sindh while some moved to foreign countries.
The worsening law and order situation in the province has forced the Hindu and Sikh traders to leave their ancestral homes for a peaceful living elsewhere, he said.
Most Hindus and Sikhs from tribal areas, Peshawar, Swat and some mountainous areas left their ancestral areas, Sarabdiyal said.
Many Sikh families also left Mohallah Jogan Shah, one of the oldest neighbourhoods of Sikhs in Peshawar, due to an increase in incidents of target killings in the province over the last few years.
The locality, situated near Dabgari, is home to a historic gurdwara and a community school of Sikhs. There were around 6,000 Sikhs who lived in Mohallah Jogan Shah.
“This is the area where our ancestors lived and we have maintained our culture, traditions and our own educational system,” said 50-year-old Pardeep Singh.
Bhai Joga Singh Khalsa Dharmic School and Guru Angad Dev Jee Khalsa Dharmic School both impart religious as well as secular education, with a deep focus on Sikh culture in Mohallah Jogan Shah.
According to the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), at least 179 terrorism-related incidents took place in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan this year till April-end.
Last year, the CTD released a report on the terror incidents in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, stating that 563 terror incidents occurred in 2023 and out of them, police were targeted 243 times.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province borders war-torn Afghanistan where militants have hideouts. The province has been a target of terrorists who easily cross the porous border and go back after launching attacks, according to Pakistani officials.