OKARA: Traffic on GT Road was blocked all day on Wednesday by hundreds of tenants of Anjuman-i-Mazareen Punjab (AMP) demanding release of their Kulyana state activist who was arrested by Okara Saddar police on Tuesday evening. The protest was going on till the filing of this report.

Hafiz Muhammad Jabir was wanted by police in a murder case under sections 302, 148, 149 of the PPC on a report of Lal Masih, brother of the ‘murdered’ Shaukat Masih. President of the AMP Kulyana state, Malik Saleem Ghakhar, was also arrested in the same case five months ago and was still behind bars.

The tenants of Okara Military Farms (OMF) and Kulyana had found about his arrest late on Tuesday. They were called near the railway crossing of 3/4L village in the OMF area to arrange a protest.

AMP General Secretary Mehr Abdus Sattar told the media that protesters waited for police to negotiate with them till 1am. But no one from the district administration or police approached them following which the tenants blocked GT Road.

Deputy superintendents of police (DSPs) Tariq Zafar, Farooq Kamyana and Iqbal Zafar held talks with the AMP on behalf of the district police officer (DPO) and regional police officer (RPO) around 1pm. Sattar claimed the DSPs promised to release Jabir in an hour after resumption of traffic on the road. The protesters unblocked the road but kept waiting for Jabbir’s release. Three hours later when their demand was not met they blocked the road again and had not moved till the filing of this report.

Hundreds of tenants had parked their tractor trolleys on the road and railway crossing. The men and women were also wielding clubs and batons.

DPO Faisal Rana told the media RPO Sahiwal Division Ghulam Mehmood Dogar had summoned case files of Jabir and pledged that if they opened the road for traffic, he would decide about the case within two days. But the tenants did not move.

The DPO further said cases had been registered against Jabir in four police stations, including a murder, five under Section 7 of the ATA, 14 theft and illegal land possession. The DPO said Jabir had been arrested in the murder case.

There have been several complaints in the last seven to eight years against such prolonged protests by the AMP whose activists blocked GT Road whenever there was unrest among tenants. These blockades would usually continue for 10 hours at least and Okara had become notorious for motorists because of this.

The length of two spells of the current protest had crossed 16 hours, which was the longest blockade so far on GT Road along the railway track. Though police would divert traffic to branch roads from Sahiwal in the west and Renala Khurd in the east, but thousands of vehicles would still get stranded.

Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2015

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