Islamabad, Aug. 12 (Reuters): A son-in-law of Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was being held in custody after an assault on two British diplomats in Islamabad, police said today.

The two diplomats, a man and woman, suffered a “vicious and unprovoked attack” by several young men as they were walking home at night in a posh district of the Pakistani capital, a British High Commission spokesperson said.

British high commissioner Mark Lyall Grant said the two had suffered injuries and the matter was now in the hands of the police. “Both the diplomats suffered facial and other injuries. Happily those injuries, though serious at the time, are not long-lasting and so they are making a full recovery,” Lyall Grant said. “There was more than one youth involved and the attack did last for some minutes.”

A motive for the attack in the early hours of Sunday morning had not been ascertained, another British official said. Police confirmed Saad Ali Khan, Khan’s son-in-law, was being held. “He had some quarrel with the British diplomats,” Safeer Bhatti, head of Islamabad’s Kohsar police station, said.