MANSEHRA: The residents of Dara Shaynaya and adjoining areas have warned that they will protest if the road leading to dozens of villages is not reopened.

“The Dara Shaynaya-Oghi Road, which was blocked last month due to the rain-caused landslides, has yet not been cleared to traffic troubling the residents,” former nazim Khalid Khan Tanoli told reporters in Oghi area on Thursday.

Accompanied by a group of residents, Mr Tanoli said the Kamari-Banda section of Dara Shaynaya Road was blocked last month after boulders fell down the mountain but neither the tehsil administration nor communication and works department cleared it.

“We cannot take patients to hospitals, while there is a shortage of essential goods due to the road blockade,” he said.

Mr Tanoli said the government had ordered the district administrations across the province to clear such roads.

Villagers say landslides caused road blockage last month

He said the residents met local lawmakers and officials concerned and sought the immediate road reopening, but to no avail.

“If this road is not opened to traffic in a couple of days, we (residents) will take to the streets,” he warned.COUPLE POISONED: The medical examination has revealed that a couple found dead on the first night of their wedding were poisoned.

“We have lodged an FIR against unidentified culprits,” senior superintendent of police (investigation) Arif Javed told reporters on Thursday.

He said a local court had ordered the exhumation of the bodies on the complaint of the bride’s father about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths.

The SSP said abdominal samples taken from the bodies were examined at a Lahore lab, which revealed the presence of poisonous substances.

He said the people involved in the poisoning of the couple would be taken to justice.

The bridegroom’s family had told police that the couple had suffocated due to gas leak on Dec 15 last year.

REGULARISATION: The Peshawar High Court’s Abbottabad circuit bench has ordered the regularisation of the services of over 100 daily-wage employees of the Utility Stores Corporation mostly from upper parts of Hazara division.

A group of these employees had moved the bench in 2015 for the service regularisation orders.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2020