TOBA TEK SINGH: Faisalabad Minority Rights Movement (MRM) chief Lala Robin Daniel and Christian community leaders say that for the last two months, the Christian population in the province is being framed as drug dens and fake cases are being registered against the community members.

Addressing a press conference at the Faisalabad Press Club on Monday, they announced support for the ongoing campaign against drugs in Punjab but claimed that drugs like heroin, hashish, ice, etc, were not products of the Christians.

They said a vilification campaign was also running on social media and false, baseless cases were being registered to prove that the drugs were the products of the Christians. They appealed to the administration to take action against the propaganda.

“If the Constitution has declared alcohol a part of our religious rituals and beliefs, then if any state institution, including the police, declares it a drug and advertises it as hateful, it is a violation of the Constitution,” they said.

The Christian community leaders who spoke on the occasion included Bishop Shams Pervaiz, Pervaiz Iqbal Bhatti, Raja Thomas, Malik Sohail Sardar and Shaukat Khokhar.

They added that recently, police took action and searched two houses of Christian town in the limits of Gulberg Police Station on a bogus report of a miscreant but police staff apologised for not finding anything there but the miscreant did not come forward. They said that the reports of the intelligence agencies are biased and one-sided, we appeal to the heads of the intelligence agencies to make their reporting process transparent.

They announced if the bogus cases were not dropped within five days and the campaign of bogus cases continued, they would stage a sit-in in front of the Punjab Assembly.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2026