JHELUM: Religious scholar and lecturer Engineer Muhammad Ali Mirza survived an attack by on Sunday, police said. The attacker was killed in retaliatory firing.

Mirza, known for delivering religious speeches on social media, has over 3.1 million followers on his YouTube channel. He was also attacked earlier this year, and previously survived an assassination attempt in Jhelum in March 2021.

The religious scholar was outside the Quran & Sunnat Research Academy where he delivers lectures when a man carrying a 9mm pistol arrived at the premises, lay down on the ground, and opened fire, Jhelum police spokesperson Kashif Kiani told Dawn.

Jhelum Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Chaudhry Shafiq said police fired back in retaliation, killing the attacker on the spot. He added that Mirza remained safe and unhurt during the attack and is continuing his lectures at the academy.

Kiani confirmed that a policeman on the scholar’s security team was injured during the attack. The constable sustained a gunshot wound to his foot and was taken to Jhelum District Headquarters Hospital, where his condition was stated to be out of danger.

SSP Shafiq that deployed security was active at the time of the attack and would be further beefed up.

The Jhelum district police officer (DPO) initially said that an investigation was under way to identify the attacker and his suspected links to others involved in the attack.

He later Dawn that the attacker had been identified as a 26-year-old man, who was a resident of the Mianwali district.

Preliminary investigation revealed that he was “motivated” to commit the crime after watching some videos.

However, SSP Shafiq told Dawn that the suspect had a record of criminal cases, including those of murder, and the Mianwali police were being contacted to get more information about him.

When contacted, Mianwali DPO Waqar Kharal told Dawn that the suspect had a criminal record. “In 2016, when he was a ninth-grade student, he had a brawl with his teacher … He later fired on his teacher with a 12-bore shotgun and murdered his him. He was jailed, and in 2017, the teacher’s family killed one of his brothers,” he added.

The DPO said the suspect’s brother had thrown him out of his house in Mianwali, following which he was working as a security guard at a petrol pump in Lahore.

Although the motive behind the attack remains unclear, Mirza has been detained for his remarks in the past and banned from delivering speeches to prevent potential violence.