The party held funeral prayers in absentia in Lahore and other cities for its Punjab president, who died in the city on Sunday, and for three brothers shot dead in a Bajaur bazaar.
LAHORE: Thousands of people attended funeral prayers in absentia in Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and several other cities on Friday for Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar, the Punjab president of the Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML), and for three party workers the party says were killed in a terrorist attack in Bajaur.
In Lahore, PMML Vice-President Hafiz Talha Saeed led the prayers at Jamia Masjid Al-Raheem in Baghbanpura, while party Joint Secretary Qari Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh led a second congregation at the Taqwa Islamic Centre in Johar Town. Mourners prayed for the forgiveness of the dead and paid tribute to what the party called Sarwar’s religious and organisational service.
The prayers closed a week of mourning that began when Sarwar died in Lahore on Sunday, October 18. Over the following days his house on Temple Road became a stopping point for religious and political leaders from across the country.
Not the former governor
Sarwar should not be confused with Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar, the former Punjab governor and one-time British MP. The PMML leader headed the party’s Punjab chapter, its largest and most active, and was based in Lahore, the city where the party runs its central offices and holds most of its major events.
How he died
The PMML has not given a medical cause of death. A party spokesperson said Sarwar collapsed and died while walking from his home to a mosque to pray. According to reports, he died of a head injury after falling down a flight of stairs. Neither account has been officially confirmed, and the party has not suggested foul play.
At his funeral, the cleric Allama Hisham Elahi Zaheer described Sarwar’s death as martyrdom, a term often used in religious tradition for a death that occurs on the way to prayer or in the service of faith.
The loss came four months after a personal tragedy. Sarwar’s son, Hussain Hashim, died in June after spending about a week in critical condition with liver injuries from a road accident, according to a report at the time. His funeral was also held in Lahore.
Thousands at Chauburji
Sarwar’s own funeral prayer was offered late on Sunday at Jamia Masjid Al-Qadsia at Chauburji Chowk and was led by PMML Secretary General Saifullah Kasuri. He was buried in a local cemetery.
Party Vice-Presidents Hafiz Talha Saeed and Hafiz Abdul Rauf, Deputy Secretary General Khalid Naik Gujjar, central spokesman Dr Muzammil Iqbal Hashmi, Allama Hisham Elahi Zaheer, Faheem-ur-Rehman Saigol, Hafiz Masood Kamal, Azeemuddin Lakhvi, Jamaat-i-Islami’s Javed Qasuri, Mufti Ashiq Hussain, Sheikh Naeem Badshah, Mufti Yusuf Taibi and Faisal Nadeem were among those present, the party said.
“He was not merely an individual but a movement,” Kasuri said. Talha Saeed said the size of the turnout reflected the respect Sarwar had earned through a life of public service.
Haji Hanif, who said he had known Sarwar for 20 years, told mourners he had never put his own interests first and was always ready to help people. Saigol said people of Sarwar’s character were rare.
Condolences on Temple Road
On Tuesday, PMML President Khalid Masood Sindhu led a stream of visitors to the family home. They included Quran-o-Sunnat Movement Chairman Allama Ibtisam Elahi Zaheer, Muttahida Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith Pakistan President Ziaullah Bukhari, Jamaat-i-Islami Central Punjab chief Javed Qasuri, Tehreek Hurmat-e-Rasool Chairman Maulana Ameer Hamza, the scholar Maulana Qari Ibrahim Mir Muhammadi and Sheikh Naeem Badshah.
Delegations from the party’s Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapters, led by Ajmal Chandia, Muhammad Ashfaq Khan, Aqeel Laghari and Hafiz Abdul Ghaffar Bahawalpuri, offered condolences to Sarwar’s sons and to Kasuri. The range of Ahl-e-Hadith and other religious groups among the visitors underlined the network of mosques and seminaries in which the party is rooted.
Three brothers shot in Khar
The three Bajaur victims were brothers. Gunmen opened fire on them in the Khar Bazaar on the evening of Saturday, October 17, local media reported. Police named the dead as Hanif and Ibrahim, and said a third brother, Abbas, was critically injured and taken to the district headquarters hospital in Khar. By Sunday, local outlets reported that all three had died.
Mashriq TV identified Haneefullah as a PMML worker. The party’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa president, Muhammad Ishaq, condemned the killings and demanded a transparent and impartial investigation and the immediate arrest of those responsible. Police said they had opened an investigation but have not named suspects or a motive, and no group has claimed the attack.
Bajaur, on the Afghan border, has seen repeated attacks on political and religious gatherings. A suicide bombing at a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl rally in Khar killed more than 60 people in July 2023, and 11 security personnel were killed when militants rammed a checkpoint in February this year in an attack claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The federal government imposed an emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this month, citing the worst militant violence in a decade, and Pakistani officials have repeatedly blamed Afghanistan-based networks for the surge.
The US designation
Sarwar’s death drew attention well beyond Pakistan. Indian media widely reported it under headlines describing him as a “US-designated terrorist”. On December 28, 2016, the US Treasury designated him a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, saying he had been a senior Lashkar-e-Taiba official in Lahore for more than 10 years, had served as the group’s Lahore chief since at least January 2015 and had raised and moved funds through Pakistan’s formal financial system. In 2018 the United States also designated the PMML’s predecessor, the Milli Muslim League, as an alias of Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Pakistan has taken its own action against the network. It banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation in 2019, and that March the Punjab government took administrative control of their Lahore headquarters. Hafiz Saeed has been held in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail since 2019 after convictions in several terror-financing cases. Those steps helped Pakistan leave the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list in October 2022. Officials in Islamabad argue that the country has done more than its critics acknowledge, while pressing for evidence-based scrutiny of India’s own role in militancy in Pakistan.
The PMML is registered with the Election Commission and says it works within the Constitution. It contested the February 2024 general election without winning a seat; Talha Saeed stood from Lahore and lost. The party has since tried to build a local base through welfare work and campaigns on prices and governance.
A gap in Punjab
Sarwar’s death leaves the party without its provincial chief at a moment when Punjab is its main political battleground. The PMML has been pressing the Election Commission for a date for long-delayed local government elections in the province. It fielded a candidate in the NA-77 Gujranwala by-election, and it has promised a network of 25 rescue centres run by its welfare wing.
In Lahore, it has also positioned itself on daily-life issues, from gas shortages and LPG prices to electricity tariffs. Days after Sarwar’s death, Sindhu went ahead with a youth convention in the city where he called young people “Iqbal’s Shaheens”, a sign the party intends to keep its schedule.
The party has not announced a successor. In Bajaur, the family of the three brothers is waiting for police to say who killed them and why.
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