At the hearing of a suo motu case relating to minority rights and the incident at the Karak shrine, the chief justice questioned if anyone had been detained by the government for the crime or have the perpetrators paid back for the damages.
A shrine in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Karak was burned down by a mob on December 30 last year. On social media, video clips of a crowd shouting slogans and desecrating the shrine had gone viral.
The court at that time had directed the authorities to collect the money for the damages by the culprits. However, in the hearing on Monday, when asked if any recoveries had been made, Ikram Chaudhry, the Evacuee Trust Property lawyer, said that no money had been recovered, but the provincial government has allotted Rs3,41,00,000 for the rebuilding of the Karak shrine.
Justice Ajaz ul Hassan responded that the court had specifically issued orders for the perpetrators to bear the financial loss in order to make an example out of them.
"The Hindu community should reconstruct the shrine. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government will pay back the cost of reconstructing the shrine," MNA Ramesh Kumar informed the court while adding that the Karak area is a sensitive one.
To this the CJ issued directives for the authorities to immediately rebuild the temple and also ordered to have Prahladpuri temple in Multan prepared for the Hindu festival, Holi.