ISLAMABAD – Hindus celebrated Diwali at a historical 160-year-old temple at Peshawar in northwest Pakistan after it was reopened to the minority community after six decades on court’s orders.
Scores of Hindus, including women and children, visited the Goraknath temple at Gor Khatri, which was reopened after Phool Wati, the daughter of the shrine’s cleric, petitioned the Peshawar High Court.
Children and youths wearing colourful clothes were part of the gathering. The children burst crackers while the youths sang bhajans and danced.
Phool Wati and her son Kaka Ram have claimed that the temple, which has been controlled in past decades by the police, the Evacuee Property Trust Board and the provincial archaeology department, belongs to their family.
Though a two-judge bench of the high court ruled last month that Phool Wati had failed to provide evidence of her family’s ownership of the temple, it directed the reopening of the shrine for religious purposes.
