HYDERABAD, Jan 22: About two dozen peasants, including women and children, who said they had escaped from a landlord’s private jail in Umerkot a day earlier, staged a protest demonstration outside the press club on Monday against their alleged captor.
Talking to journalists Satramdas, Tamachi and Mevo, all belonging to scheduled caste, said that they had worked for wadera Mehmood Palli for four years but he never paid them for their labour nor allowed them to leave his fields during the period.
They alleged that they were kept in bondage under round-the-clock watchful guard by wadera’s men but on Sunday they managed to run away from the field and reached a hari camp in Kotri.
They expressed fear that their captor might implicate them in some false cases or have them kidnapped as a punishment for their escape and demanded that the authorities concerned should provide them protection and force the wadera to pay their dues.
The haris were led by noted rights activist Ms Nasreen Shakeel Pathan.
WIDOW’S APPEAL: Ms Nawab Khatoon, a widow, has appealed to higher authorities to order recovery of her son Mir Hassan who she alleged was kidnapped eight months ago by the family of a girl he loved and later married.
She told a news conference at the press club on Monday that Mir Hassan Korai and Mehnaz, daughter of Noor Khan Pathan, had fled to Balochistan on April 4, 2006, to get married after having fallen in love. But on April 17 the boy’s maternal uncle Sabz Ali Korai returned the girl to her parents to avoid a possible clash, she said.
However, the girl’s family attacked Sabz Ali’s home in Sabz Ali Korai village of Latifabad and kidnapped her son Mir Hassan, she said, adding that she rushed to police station but they refused to register her complaint.
She then approached the court, which ordered police to register an FIR, but they neither recovered her son nor did anything to arrest the culprits and alleged that police themselves were protecting the kidnappers.
PROTECTION SOUGHT: A woman, Taj Bai alias Taji, has sought protection against her parents who she says have filed false cases against her husband and in-laws after she married in court of her own free will.
Ms. Taji, resident of Karooro village of Nagarparkar taluka, told a news conference here on Monday that her parents had earlier engaged her to Dur Mohammad but later changed their mind and decided to marry to Ali Sher, which was unacceptable to her.
She said that she had married of her own free will and that the case against her and her in-laws was absolutely false because nobody had kidnapped her.
She said that they were hiding in different places for fear of Khan Mohammad and appealed to authorities to provide them protection.
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