A senior Sunni cleric in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan, who disclosed the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl by a local police commander, has been summoned to a special court for clerics.

According to Haalvsh, a group that monitors rights violations of the Sunni minority in Iran, Molavi Abdul Ghaffar Naqshbandi was summoned to a court in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad in a phone call. In response, he asked court officials to send him a written summons, in accordance with the law, the report adds.

The report emphasized that the summoning of Naqshbandi comes after an apparent attempt to discredit a top Sunni cleric by the local representative of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Last month, a leaked document from the hard-line Fars news agency said Khamenei told security and military officials to try and disgrace Molavi Abdolhamid, a spiritual leader for Iran's Sunni Muslim population, who is a vocal critic of the government, instead of arresting him.