Regional
Hindu group toughens stance on India’s mosque-temple disputes
A powerful Hindu group said several mosques in India were built over demolished Hindu temples, apparently hardening its stance in a decades-long sectarian dispute just days after a huge temple was inaugurated on the site of a razed mosque, Reuters reported.
The comments from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist party, come after Modi and the RSS chief led Monday's consecration of the temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992.
The fight over claims to holy sites has divided Hindu-majority India, which has the world's third-largest Muslim population, since independence from British rule in 1947.
Four days after the temple was inaugurated in the northern city of Ayodhya, a lawyer for Hindu petitioners said the Archaeological Survey of India had determined that a 17th century mosque in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, in Modi's parliamentary constituency, had been built over a destroyed Hindu temple, Reuters reported.
The Archaeological Survey did not respond to a request for comment.
Late on Friday, senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar questioned whether Varanasi's Gyanvapi mosque and three others, including the razed one in Ayodhya on the site where many Hindus believe Lord Ram was born, were mosques at all.
"Whether we should consider them mosques or not, the people of the country and the world should think about it," Kumar told Reuters in an interview, referring to the sites in Gyanvapi, Ayodhya, one other in Uttar Pradesh state and one in Madhya Pradesh. "They should stand with the truth, or they should stand with the wrong?"
In the group's first reaction to the Gyanvapi findings, Kumar said, "Accept the truth. Hold dialogues and let the judiciary decide."
Raising questions about the mosques does not mean Hindu groups comprise "an anti-mosque movement", he said.
"This is not an anti-Islam movement. This is a movement to seek the truth that should be welcomed by the world."
‘Nothing political’
Muslim groups are disputing the assertions of Hindu groups in court.
Zufar Ahmad Faruqi, chairman of the Sunni Central Waqf Board in Uttar Pradesh, said the group "have confidence in the judiciary that it will do what is correct.
"We want to live in harmony and peacefully while protecting the monuments as they are," he said. "Nothing political about it, we are in the court and facing it legally."
The Modi-led opening of the Ayodhya temple fulfilled a 35-year-old pledge of his Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of a general election due by May. He is expected to win a third straight term, the longest stretch since India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
The razing of the Ayodhya mosque sparked riots across India that authorities say killed at least 2,000 people, mostly Muslims. Hindu groups have for decades said that Muslim Mughal rulers built monuments and places of worship after destroying ancient Hindu structures.
Indian law bars the conversion of any place of worship and provides for the maintenance of the religious character of places of worship as they existed at the time of independence - except for the Ayodhya shrine. The Supreme Court is hearing challenges to the law.
The court this month halted plans for a survey of another centuries-old mosque in Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous and politically important state, to determine if it contained Hindu relics and symbols.
The RSS's Kumar, who is also the chief patron of the group's Muslim wing, said Islamic law requires mosques to be constructed on undisputed land, or the land should be donated by someone who has bought it or the people building the mosque should buy it.
Regional
At least 18 dead in retaliatory sectarian attacks in Pakistan
The latest killings in a tribal district began on Friday night, when armed men attacked a village in the district, said the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
At least 18 people were killed and 30 injured in further sectarian violence in northwestern Pakistan, officials said on Saturday, as tensions remained high following attacks on transport convoys that killed dozens of civilians this week, Reuters reported.
The latest killings in a tribal district began on Friday night, when armed men attacked a village in the district, said the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry.
"They set on fire petrol stations and damaged properties as part of revenge," he told Reuters by phone. He said he and top police officials would be visiting the area and engage tribal elders on both sides to restore order.
The toll since Thursday is 58 dead, read the report.
AFP reported on Saturday that 32 people were killed in the latest violence, citing an unnamed official.
On Thursday unidentified gunmen opened fire on passenger vehicles, killing over 40 in the Kurrram district, where armed Shia and Sunni Muslims have engaged in tribal and sectarian rivalry for decades over a land dispute near the Afghanistan border.
Most of the dead were Shiites, officials said, sparking retaliatory attacks by armed groups, with markets and schools remaining shut in a curfew-like situation, Reuters reported.
A police official requesting anonymity told Reuters that the death toll from the fresh violence could have been higher had residents of the village that was attacked not already evacuated their homes in anticipation of more violence.
He said the residents of Bagan village, a mostly Sunni area, had already left their homes and shifted to safe places in Lower Kurram.
Regional
Gunmen attack Pakistan passenger vehicles, killing at least 38 people
Gunmen opened fire on passenger vehicles in a tribal area in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 38 people and wounding 29, the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, said.
Reuters reported that among the fatalities in the attack, which occurred in the Kurram tribal district, were a woman and a child, Chaudhry said, adding: “It’s a major tragedy and death toll is likely to rise."
No group claimed responsibility for the incident.
"There were two convoys of passenger vehicles, one carrying passengers from Peshawar to Parachinar and another from Parachinar to Peshawar, when armed men opened fire on them,” a local resident of Parachinar, Ziarat Hussain told Reuters by telephone, adding that his relatives were travelling from Peshawar in the convoy.
President Asif Ali Zardari, in a statement, strongly condemned the attack on passenger vehicles.
Regional
Pakistan’s ex-PM Imran Khan gets bail in state gifts case, his party says
A court in Pakistan granted bail to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan in a case relating to the illegal sale of state gifts, his party said on Wednesday.
Khan, 71, has been in prison since August 2023, but it was not immediately clear if the embattled politician would be released given that he faces a number of other charges too, including inciting violence against the state, Reuters reported.
"If the official order is received today, his family and supporters will approach the authorities for his release," one of his party's lawyers, Salman Safdar, told journalists. Safdar added that, as far as he knew, Khan had been granted bail or acquitted in all the cases he faced.
However, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, told Geo TV Khan lacked bail in cases in which he is charged with planning riots by his supporters in the wake of his arrest in May last year.
Khan denies any wrongdoing, and alleges all the cases registered against him since he was removed from power in 2022 are politically motivated to keep him in jail.
The case in which he was granted bail on Wednesday by the Islamabad High Court is known as the Toshakhana, or state treasury case.
It has multiple versions and charges all revolving around allegations that Khan and his wife illegally procured and then sold gifts worth over 140 million rupees ($501,000) in state possession, which he received during his 2018-22 premiership.
Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were both handed a 14-year sentence on those charges, following a three-year sentence handed to him in late 2023 in another version of the same case.
Their sentences have been suspended in appeals at the high court.
The gifts included diamond jewellery and seven watches, six of them Rolexes - the most expensive being valued at 85 million rupees ($305,000).
Khan's wife was released last month after being in the same prison as Khan for months.
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