By Aamir Latif
KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) – Unidentified assailants on Friday gunned down a Sikh parliamentarian in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, which borders war-stricken Afghanistan, officials told local media.
Sardar Suran Singh, who belonged to the country’s tiny Sikh community and had been elected as a member of the KP’s state assembly on a reserved seat for minorities in the 2013 general election, was killed by militants in front of his home in the Boner district, located some 180 kilometers from the capital, Islamabad.
He was a member of Pakistan’s former cricket hero Imran Khan — led Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which rules the KP province. His age was not communicated.
“He [Singh] was coming back to his home after addressing a ceremony when he was hit,” Mushtaq Ghani, the state information minister told reporters adding that the slain parliamentarian was hit in the head.
The security agencies are currently searching for the assailants who got away, Ghani said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but security agencies said they are almost sure about the involvement of Taliban, who had called to target government parliamentarians and officials in revenge for an ongoing military onslaught against them in the country’s restive tribal belt near the Afghan border.
A suspected Taliban had gunned down a Christian minister Shahbaz Bhatti in 2011 in Islamabad.
Sikhs make up around 40,000 of the total population of 180 million of the South Asian Muslim state.
