Lahore, March 8 (PTI) Police have booked over 45 members of minority Ahmadi community for offering prayers at their worship places in two separate cities in Pakistan, police said on Saturday.

Police in Karachi said they took 25 Ahmadis (including children) into “safe custody” after a good number of radical Islamists surrounded their place of worship in Surjani Town area and chanted slogans against them for offering Friday prayers.

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According to police officer Irfan Ali Baloch, several workers of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) gathered outside the Ahmadi place of worship threatening them to stop offering Friday prayers as it is meant for Muslims only.

“Anticipating a possible attack by the TLP members on the Ahmadis, police took 25 Ahmadis present at the worship place into protective custody,” Baloch said.

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In the other incident, over 20 Ahmadis were booked in Sargodha district of Punjab province, some 200 kilometres from Lahore, for offering prayers at their worship place, reportedly on the pressure of the local TLP leadership.

Sargodha police said that they booked the Ahmadis under Section 298C of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Section 298-C criminalises Ahmadis who refer to themselves as Muslim.

Although Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, Pakistan's Parliament in 1974 declared the community as non-Muslims. A decade later, they were not just banned from calling themselves Muslims but were also barred from practising aspects of Islam.

Under the law, the Ahmadis cannot construct or display any symbol that identifies them as Muslims such as building minarets or domes on mosques, or publicly writing verses from the Quran.

However, there also is a Lahore High Court ruling that states the places of worship built prior to a particular ordinance issued in 1984 are legal and hence should not be altered or razed down.

Last week, police arrested 23 members of minority Ahmadis community for offering “Friday prayers” in Daska, Sialkot, some 100 kilometres from Lahore.

“Ahmadis' prayer leader Arshad Sahi was giving Friday sermon. Sahi was reading Islamic verses and other Ahmadis were listening to him. As local Muslims' sentiments were hurt, police registered an FIR against the 27 Ahmadis present there under Section 298C of the Pakistan Penal Code,” Tanzeel said and added 23 of them have been arrested.

Radical Islamist party TLP is reportedly behind the police action against Ahmadis. The TLP activists pressured the police to stop Ahmadis from worshipping even at their own worship places in Daska.

Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan lambasted the police action against innocent Ahmadi men and children.

Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan spokesperson Aamir Mahmood strongly condemned the rising hate campaign against Ahmadis and the state authorities' continued subjugation to extremist pressure.

He said the persecution of Ahmadis has been ongoing for a long time, but the situation has now escalated to the extent that even worship within private premises is being denied.

He emphasised that freedom of religion and its practice is a fundamental human right, enshrined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan.

“Under the guise of religion, certain malicious elements are intensifying their nefarious campaign against Ahmadis while the authorities instead of ensuring their protection are facilitating this extremist agenda,” he said.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) this week released a report — Under Siege Freedom of Religion or Belief 2023-24 -- which exposes the alarming scale of state-led and mob-driven persecution against religious minorities, especially the Ahmadi community.

The report documents a pattern of systemic oppression, including arbitrary arrests, desecration of graves, and violent crackdowns on the community's religious practices.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)