Shocking amateur video has surfaced showing a female police officer being beaten, kicked and pulled around by a mob in Orangi Town, Karachi.
SHO Sharafat Khan, who led a team to stop the worshippers from congressional Friday prayers, suffered bruises while other officials also sustained injuries in the attack.
Notably, in the greater interest of saving lives, a decision to ban the prayer congregations at mosques was taken by Sindh government.
However, some people attended prayers at mosques on Friday, despite appeals from the Government for people to stay at home.
A similar incident took place last week. In a bid to stop people from congregating for Friday Prayers, authorities in the southern province of Sindh, where Karachi is the capital, had imposed a three-hour curfew. While most mosques and religious leaders followed the noon to 3 p.m. curfew, one Islamic cleric in Liaqatabad allegedly opposed it and called on his congregates to defy the ban.
The ban came after last week when many mosques defied government requests to postpone Friday congregations to help in stop the spread of coronavirus infections. Last week, a government order calling on clerics to keep their congregations limited to five people was widely ignored.
Friday Prayers are seen as a key religious obligation in most Muslim countries, but many nations have stopped such gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 50,000 people globally among more the 1 million confirmed cases.
