Peshawar-on 31st March 2023, 45-year-old Dayal Singh was sitting at his grocery store in Dir Colony market of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, Pakistan. At around 3 P.M., an unidentified gunman arrived on a bike, entered his shop, and asked for some goods. When Dayal Singh turned to get the goods, the assailant opened fire, fatally shooting him twice in the head. A resident of Peshawar’s Mohalla Jogan Shah Neighborhood, Dayal Singh would travel from Dagri to his rented grocery shop on Kohat Road every day. He is survived by his widow and 4 children; 3 sons aged 3, 5, and 9 years; and a daughter aged 11 years.
According to local hearsay, he may have been killed because he provoked jealousy among other shopkeepers in the area by selling goods at cheaper rates. Many others see it as part of the general wave of communally motivated killings that has claimed so many Sikh lives in Peshawar in recent years.
Like most other Sikhs in Peshawar, Dayal Singh was not financially well off.KPK’s tiny but close knit Pashto Sikh community is unique in that their main language remains Pashto – not Punjabi (Gurmukhi or Shahmukhi). According to Ameer Singh, President of the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PSGPC), of the 20,000-25,000-strong Sikh community estimated to be in Pakistan, about 500 Sikh families are in Peshawar.
On September 30, 2021 Satnam Singh, a hakeem, was shot dead inside his shop in Fariqabad, Peshawar by unidentified gunmen. A few months later on May 15, 2022, two Sikh traders Ranjit Singh and Kuljit Singh were shot dead when they were sitting inside their shops at Batta Tal Chowk, Peshawar. Dayal Singh’s murder marks the fourth such targeted killing in Peshawar in the last two years.
The fate and future of Dayal Singh’s family are hanging in the balance. With the primary breadwinner and caretaker gone for good, his wife and children have none to turn to.
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