KARACHI, Nov 15: Around 200 activists of the Pakistan People’s Party, including some top leaders, were arrested during a protest demonstration against the imposition of emergency in the country and the house arrest of party chairperson Benazir Bhutto as well as what a party spokesman described as the “ruthless crackdown against party workers in Punjab, the NWFP and elsewhere in the country.”

However, police contested the claim and said that around 100 PPP activists were rounded up from the DHA and Saddar areas on Thursday.

The party also claimed that an unarmed PPP worker, Ahmed Baloch, was shot dead by police at Lyari’s Hasht Chowk, while plain-clothes policemen allegedly shot two other youths in the same locality. Two party supporters were shifted to hospital with bullet wounds, the statement added.

Ms Bhutto has been placed under house in Lahore for seven days by the Punjab government in an attempt to foil her plans to lead a long march.

Apart from Lyari, where pitched battles were witnessed between armed men and police, a big protest demonstration was held at the Submarine Chowrangi by the PPP, where police arrested Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Mian Raza Rabbani, former MNA Yousuf Talpur, MPA Rafiq Engineer, Habib Jan, MPA Sharifunisa Laghari, Shamim Ara Panhwar, and Farheen Mughal along with hundreds of party activists, spokesman for the party Aijaz Durrani told Dawn.

“As we were gathering for the demonstration chanting slogans against the Musharraf regime, police started arresting our people”, claimed Liaquat Baloch, a party activist. He said police resorted to baton-charging and exhibited the “worst kind of state terrorism on protesters.”

He said that PPP activists had been lodged in almost all the police stations of Clifton Town including Clifton, Darakshan, Gizri and Frere, where the police were allegedly misbehaving with the detained activists as well as people who were coming to visit them.

Mr Baloch added that women activists -- numbering over a dozen -- were being kept at the women’s police station in Civil Lines.

There were also reports that a large number of detained activists managed to escape from the Gizri police station, but police denied this.

The PPP’s protest plans at the Submarine intersection were kept secret lest the police should foil the protest. The demonstration and arrests made by the police caused serious traffic gridlock in the area.

Mr Durrani also claimed that police arrested around 50 activists of the party from outside the Karachi Press Club and the Sindh High Court.

He said that members of the party’s minority wing Anwar Laldin, Dr Jaipal Chabria and Ashok Jhutmalani were arrested from outside the press club.