Five members of a family belonging to Pakistan’s minority Ahmadi community have been arrested for planning “acts of terrorism ” close to Eid ul-Fitr festival in the southern Sindh province.
The five persons were arrested after a bomb exploded inside a house in Badin city last night, SSP Abdul Qayum Pitafi told reporters.
He said when police investigated the blast “we found that acts of terrorism were being planned there.” “We have recovered explosives from the house which belongs to an Ahmadi family and arrested five persons,” Pitafi said.
A young was said to have been injured in the blast but he is said to have been now shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation after being treated at a hospital.
But a relative of the family has told the Dawn newspaper that allegations of the family members planning terror attacks were false. Some unidentified persons threw explosives from the roof of the house in which the boy was injured, he claimed.
“We informed the police soon after the incident, but they took away the injured boy and also arrested four other family members including the boy’s father from Islamkot town of Thar,” the relative said.
He suggested that his relatives were being implicated because they were Ahmadis and the case was a conspiracy. This was not the first time, the family was targeted before as well, he alleged.
Ahmadis claim they have been subjected to various forms of religious persecution and discrimination in Pakistan, which is home to the largest number of followers of the faith in the world.
The minority community, have been previously targeted by extremists and have suffered in sectarian attacks. They have often been charged for blasphemy. Legislation framed in 1974 and 1984 bans Ahmadis from calling themselves Muslims.
Earlier this month, an Ahmadi doctor was killed outside his home in Karachi by gunmen on a motorcycle.
—PTi