““Arson was frequent in Lahore and Amritsar. Between 14 April and 14 July, there were 495 attempts in Lahore to burn non-Muslim property and 116 attempts to set fire to Muslim property.88 The biggest and most destructive fire was set off in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, 22 June, when much of the carefully guarded inner-city Shahalmi Market, totally owned by Hindus and Sikhs and seen as something of a fortress, was burnt down. The Shahalmi fire broke the will of Lahore’s Sikhs and Hindus ‘to fight and stay on in Lahore’. Evidence that the city magistrate, Muhammad Ghani Cheema, was deeply involved in this arson attack appears to be compelling.89 Jenkins visited the market after the fire but there is no evidence that Cheema was even questioned.””
