Hindus are the largest non-Muslim religious group in Pakistan, which gained independence from British rule in 1947, when the subcontinent was divided between Pakistan with a Muslim majority and India with a Hindu majority.
Videos taken by local residents and shared with Reuters showed a crowd separating blocks from the temple walls using stones and mallets as the dark smoke from a large fire rose into the sky.
Local Muslim clerics organized what they told police would be a peaceful protest against the alleged expansion of the temple, located in a city in the Karak district, in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Rahmatullah Wazir, a city police officer, told Reuters.
He added that the clerics who led the protest started “provocative speeches”, after which the crowd attacked the temple.
“It was a crowd and no one was there to stop them from damaging the temple,” said Wazir, adding that most of the structure had been damaged.
District police chief Irfanullah Khan told Reuters that nine people were arrested on suspicion of participating in the attack.
The temple was built in the early 1900s as a shrine, but the local Hindu community left in 1947 and, in 1997, the site was taken over by local Muslims.
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered that it be returned to the Hindu community and the shrine rebuilt, on condition that it is not expanded in the future.
The provincial government spokesman did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
“This is a barbaric way of dealing with minorities. We are shocked and hurt … and (the incident) sent a wave of insecurity in the Hindu community,” said Haroon Sarbdyal, the local leader of the Hindu community in an interview.
Sarbdyal said that although local Hindus moved out of the village, devotees still traveled there every Thursday to visit the sanctuary.
Pakistan’s Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari condemned the incident on Twitter.
Earlier this year, human rights agency Amnesty International asked Pakistani authorities to “protect the right to freedom of religion and belief for the country’s besieged Hindu community, including building temples to exercise that right”.