ISLAMABAD: The religious persecution of minority Ahmadi community continues unabated in Pakistan as police officials, hand in glove with the local administration, demolished six minarets of the Ahmadi place of worship in the country’s central Punjab province on Tuesday night.

The demolition took place in Kharian city of Gujrat district on the insistence of a conglomerate of religious organizations called Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Islam. Raja Basharat, Gujrat’s top police official, said that members of the afore-mentioned religious organization had filed an application asking the police to take action in accordance with the constitution which had declared it illegal for Ahmadis to act or look like Muslims , to practice or propagate their faith and to call their worship place a mosque.

About one million Ahmadis living in Pakistan were prohibited by law from identifying themselves as Muslims, and their freedom of religion has been curtailed by a series of ordinances, acts and constitutional amendments.

Talking to media, a local police official Raja Zahid said that everything was done amicably and peacefully. “The decision to demolish the minarets and other similar actions taken regarding Bait-ul-Hamd, the place of worship, were done after a mutual consensus of the parties involved. The members of Qadiani community were very cooperative,” Zahid said. The Quranic verses and complimentary quotes about Prophet Muhammad written on the front of the worship place’s entrance were also removed by the police.

Nasir Dar, the spokesperson of the Ahmadi community, said that the police took action on the application of one Saqib Shakeel Ghazi without registering any FIR. There were no court orders for the demolition, he said.

“In our meeting with the police and the applicants, we told them that they can take off the Kalma and whitewash the quotes, but the minarets should only be demolished after the court’s order. In fact we pleaded that the minarets should not be touched but nobody paid attention to our plight,” Dar said. He added that six minarets had already been demolished whereas the police would demolish the two taller ones later as one was attached to the worship place’s electric supply and the other would fall on the building if pulled down by the unskilled labour.

The worshipping place, Bait-ul-Hamd, was built in 1980, four years before the former military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq passed the presidential ordinance against Qadianis.

Destroying the minarets was the third major act of persecution against the Ahamadi community this year. Last May, a lower court in Lahore, ordered or the demolition of Bait-ul-Zikr, a worshipping place, in Lahore. In March, couplets of the Holy Quran written on tiles at the Sultanpura place of worship in Lahore were desecrated when police got them removed via labourers.

“All kinds of buildings have minarets and domes as part of their designs then why can’t the Ahmadis retain the ones which are on the pre-1984 worship places?” asked Saleemuddin, the representative of the Ahmadi community in Pakistan.