DHAKA: Pakistani police on Sunday charged a populist, anti-government cleric with murder after a policeman was killed during clashes with his supporters.

The police constable was wounded in Lahore on Friday in confrontations with followers of Tahir-ul-Qadri, a religious moderate, and died of his injuries late on Saturday, police said.

‘A case of murder, inciting violence and treason, has been registered against Tahir-ul-Qadri and his supporters,’ senior police official Zulfiqar Hameed told media, reports The Straits Times.

Police said the Canada-based cleric, who had previously threatened to march on the Pakistani capital and overthrow the government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif, faced many other accusations of attempted murder as well as inciting his followers to attack police and commit terrorist acts.

Violence broke out on Friday after hundreds of the cleric’s baton-wielding supporters tried to remove the shipping containers police had used to block the roads to his party headquarters in Lahore’s upscale Model Town area.

BDST: 1655 HRS, AUG 10, 2014