Another Sikh Exodus from Pakistan’s KPK

On 21 Apr, a policeman deployed to guard a Sikh medical practitioner was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar. The victim, 45-year-old constable Farhad, was on security duty of hakim (herbal medical practitioner) Baba Surjeet Singh in Dheri Baghbanan, a suburban locality of Peshawar. An anonymous source said, ‘Pakistan did its best to suppress the news of those four rounds fired at Baghbanan Bazar, of which two hit the policeman and proved fatal.’ A Sikh community leader from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) said on the condition of anonymity that, ‘Both Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Daesh (ISIS) had taken responsibility for the attack but none of the shooters had been traced.’ After the attack, Sikhs began fleeing Peshawar and other parts of KPK once more to Pakistan Panjab or India to be safe from terror groups that target minorities. An earlier such exodus was in 2022, when two Sikh traders were killed. Surjeet is the brother of human rights activist Gurpal Singh, whom Fazal-ur-Rehman’s Islamic fundamentalist political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam nominated to the provincial assembly. A community leader said: ‘In the last two years, 4,000-odd Sikhs from more than 250 families have fled to Pakistan Panjab or India. Now the second exodus has started because even government-provided security has failed to save Sikh shopkeepers. Terror attacks in two years have killed 18 Sikhs and injured 11 critically.’