Mick Hartley

File under "brave but foolish".

A Pakistani man who tried to set up the nation's first gay club has been thrown into a mental hospital, after religious conservatives claimed he only did so after coming back from the UK.

The man, who was not identified by the Telegraph, filed an application to set the club up in Abbottabad, a conservative city in the north of the nation that nearly 240million call home….

But gay sex is criminalised in Pakistan, and can be punished with prison sentences of up to two years. On top of this, a deeply conservative culture can make it difficult to be openly gay.

So much so that the man was transferred to the Sarhad hospital for psychiatric disease in Peshawar on May 9.

He received much abuse for his application from local citizens and politicians alike.

The leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) party, a conservative religious group in the region, claimed that the applicant tried to set up the club had recently returned from a visit to the UK.

One local MP from the far-Right Pakistan Awami Tehreek party said he would've doused the club with petrol and set it alight, while the leader of the party, Naseer Khan Nazir, said there would be 'very severe consequences' if the club was allowed to go up.

Will "Queers for Palestine" set up a "Queers for Pakistan" campaign in sympathy? Organise demonstrations outside the Pakistan embassy? Perhaps not.