Babrra massacre
The Babrra Massacre happened on 12 August 1948 at Babrra ground in Charsadda District, then part of the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Pakistan. Supporters of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement were protesting because leaders had been arrested and a new government ordinance allowed detention and property seizures without reason. The protestors walked from Charsadda to Babrra ground, where police opened fire on the crowd on orders from the NWFP chief minister Abdul Qayyum Khan Kashmiri.
Official figures say about 15 protesters were killed and 40 injured. Khudai Khidmatgar sources claim around 150 were killed and 400 injured.
In September 1948, the central government banned the Khudai Khidmatgar movement and arrested many of its supporters. The provincial government also destroyed the Khudai Khidmatgar centre at Sardaryab. In 1950, commentator Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy described the massacre as barbarous, saying it surpassed Jallianwala Bagh.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 16:25 (CET).