HYDERABAD: Rep­resen­tatives of the ‘Sindh Rawadari March Action Committee’ on Monday announced that another march would be held in Hyderabad on November 23 if Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) MNA Ameer Ali Shah, who had garlanded policemen for killing Dr Shahnawaz Kunbhar in their custody, was not unseated and those who had torched the victim’s body were not arrested.

Speaking at a news conference at the local press club on Monday, Sindhu Nawaz Ghangro, Alia Bukhshal, Punhal Sario, Qazi Khizer, Nasir Mansoor, Zahra Khan, Imdad Chandio and Amar Sindhu, highlighted the events of the October 13 Rawadari March. They expressed gratitude to civil society members, including doctors, journalists, lawyers and political activists, for their moral support to the march participants.

They criticised Sindh government’s “double standards”, noting that while it sought an apology for the police action against peaceful protesters, it simultaneously booked activists for participating in the march. They claimed that those who took part in the march were being intimidated, but asserted that they would not be cowed down and would continue their just struggle.

They emphasised that this resistance represented ‘Rawadar’ Sindh, which is why the government had to concede to some of their demands, including a judicial inquiry instead of a police inquiry. They mentioned that the exhumation of Dr Shahnawaz’s body had been completed and an initial report suggested that the deceased had been tortured, with broken bones found.

The committee noted that the previous post-mortem report was false and that it supported the killers’ version. It demanded that the judicial probe’s report be made public, and called for the arrest of those who wrote the false postmortem report and those who incited the murder.

It also stated that elected representatives in Umerkot had become facilitators of the police and extremists. It called for an end to fake police encounters in Sindh conducted in the name of politics, religion, and lawlessness. They argued that the current system had become obsolete, making a decisive struggle inevitable for all Sindh-friendly forces to unite.

Published in Dawn, October 22th, 2024