News Desk
KARACHI, Pakistan — It may be a grim anecdote, but it carries a chilling truth: During the era of General Zia-ul-Haq, at the peak of his Islamization campaign in Pakistan, he reportedly asked the country’s Muslim communities to define a Muslim. The result was a fractured mosaic of exclusion, with each sect casting the others as non-Muslims.
Decades later, that divisive spirit persists, nowhere more starkly than in the persecution of the Ahmadiyya community. While Sunni Islam’s highest authority, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, recognizes Ahmadis as Muslims for their belief in the oneness of God and the prophethood of Muhammad, in Pakistan, a dangerous fringe has made it their mission to brand them heretics. For some, this zeal has become a twisted pathway to paradise, paved with violence and bloodshed. On April 17, 2025, that path led to the brutal lynching of Laeeq Ahmad Cheema, a 46-year-old Ahmadi businessman, in the heart of Karachi’s bustling Saddar district.
The attack unfolded with terrifying swiftness. A mob of hundreds, led by supporters of the hardline religiopolitical party Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), descended on an Ahmadiyya worship hall in Saddar, determined to stop the community from performing Friday prayers. Laeeq Cheema, a father of seven and a well-known figure in the Ahmadi community, was not inside the hall but nearby, reportedly filming the mob’s actions near an auto parts market. Recognized as an Ahmadi, he was set upon with sticks, bricks, and unrelenting fury. “My cousin was crying for help,” a relative later recounted in a police complaint, describing how Cheema collapsed, bleeding profusely from his head and face. By the time he was rushed to Civil Hospital Karachi, his injuries—multiple fractures and severe trauma from blunt impacts—proved fatal.
The police response was swift but underscored the complexities of confronting such violence in Pakistan. On Saturday, April 18, authorities detained 13 suspects in raids across the city, targeting members of the TLP linked to the lynching.
A First Information Report (FIR) was filed at Preedy Police Station by Cheema’s relative, charging 15 named suspects with murder and terrorism under Sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting with a deadly weapon), 149 (unlawful assembly), and 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code, alongside Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
South Deputy Inspector General of Police Syed Asad Raza told local media that six of the suspects were identified in CCTV footage as the primary assailants. Among them was a local TLP-elected Union Council chairman from Kharadar, a detail that highlighted the group’s growing political influence.
Yet, the investigation revealed troubling nuances. DIG Raza noted that seven of the 15 nominated suspects were not visible in the footage, and their involvement remains under scrutiny. Several others, charged with lesser offenses, secured interim pre-arrest bail from an anti-terrorism court by Saturday evening. Meanwhile, many of the primary suspects had gone into hiding, switching off their phones to evade capture. The police, under pressure to act, arrested 13 individuals described as TLP members closely associated with the suspects, though their precise roles in the attack are still being investigated.
The lynching was not an isolated act but part of a broader pattern of violence against Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya community, which numbers roughly half a million in a country of 240 million. Since a 1974 constitutional amendment declared Ahmadis non-Muslims, and a 1984 ordinance criminalized their religious practices—such as calling their places of worship mosques or publicly professing their faith—they have faced relentless persecution. The TLP, known for its virulent anti-blasphemy campaigns, has been a leading force in this crusade, regularly targeting Ahmadi worship sites and filing complaints against community members for “posing as Muslims.” In March 2025 alone, over 60 Ahmadis were arrested in Punjab and Sindh, and a 120-year-old Ahmadi worship place in Gujranwala was demolished under TLP pressure.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) condemned Cheema’s killing as a “failure of law and order” and a “stark reminder of the continued complicity of the state in the systematic persecution of a beleaguered community.”
In its recent report, Under Siege: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2023-24, the HRCP documented a surge in mob-led attacks on religious minorities, noting that over 750 individuals were imprisoned on blasphemy charges as of October 2024. Ahmadis, the report highlighted, face not only violence but also arbitrary detentions, desecration of graves, and the weaponization of blasphemy laws, often with the tacit approval of local authorities.
For the Ahmadis of Karachi, the Saddar lynching was a harrowing escalation. On the day of the attack, 45 to 50 community members were inside the worship hall when the mob encircled them, chanting slogans and demanding their arrest. Police, ostensibly to protect them, escorted the Ahmadis away in a prison van—a move that community spokesperson Amir Mahmood described as capitulation to extremist demands. “This is not protection; it is punishment for our faith,” he said in a statement to local media.
Cheema’s death carried an additional layer of tragedy. According to the FIR, he was a key witness in a 2023 vandalism case involving the same Ahmadiyya hall, also linked to TLP activists. On April 17, just a day before his death, he had appeared in court for a hearing in that case, where he allegedly received threats from the suspects now accused of his murder. The connection has raised questions about whether his killing was a targeted act of retribution, though police have yet to confirm this motive.
In Saddar’s crowded streets, where auto parts shops and colonial-era buildings coexist with the clamor of daily life, the lynching has left a pall of fear.
For Pakistan’s Ahmadis, it is a stark reminder of their precarious existence in a nation where faith can be a death sentence. The HRCP has called for swift justice, urging authorities to resist pressure from far-right groups to shield the perpetrators. But as the TLP’s influence grows—evidenced by its electoral successes and ability to mobilize thousands—the path to accountability remains fraught.
For now, Laeeq Cheema’s family mourns a man who was, by all accounts, a devoted father and a pillar of his community. His death, like those of countless Ahmadis before him, poses a haunting question for Pakistan: Can a nation so divided by its definitions of faith ever find a way to protect its most vulnerable?
