Jaipur: The spiritual head of Ajmer Sharif shrine in India where Pakistan’s premier Raja Pervez Ashraf is due to visit at the weekend said Friday that he was against the politician’s pilgrimage.
Ashraf for his first visit to Indian as a premier along with his family is due to begin a day-long private trip on Saturday to the shrine of Sufi saint Hazrat Khwaja Gharib Nawaz in Ajmer Sharif.
The relations between New Delhi and Islamabad are tense after tit-for-tat killings of soldiers at the tense border between the neighbours. Tensions between the rival neighbours rose in January when six soldiers on both sides were killed in exchanges along the Line of Control (LoC) de facto border in Kashmir, a region claimed by both countries.
“I have decided to boycott the visit (to protest) the brutal killing of our Indian solders by the Pakistani army,” shrine spiritual head Zainul Abedin Ali Khan said.
“The incident has hurt Indians,” Khan added in a statement.
Khan said he would also protest Ashraf’s trip because of alleged ill-treatment of Hindus in Pakistan.
“There are incidents of atrocities on minorities in Pakistan and we have seen people from the Hindu community migrating to India on account of religious, financial and social persecution in Pakistan,” he said.
“I am against that, and to express my feelings, I decided to boycott the visit,” Khan said.
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