THATTA, Jan 24: A group of armed men, posing themselves as henchmen of an influential feudal lord, on Thursday forced their way into a model village meant for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Gujjo town of Thatta district and warned the inhabitants to vacate the area or face the consequences.

The model village — Nur Goth — has been built by the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) for flood and rain victims in collaboration with the Midland Doctors Association-United Kingdom (MDA-UK) on the National Highway.

It houses several hundred people forming a total of 72 families.

Over a dozen heavily armed men riding seven motorcycles struck at the village and quickly took over one of the two-room residential quarters ordering the people around to leave at once. They also fired into the air to scare them away.

The armed men broke open the C1 quarter and asked Bashir Ahmed, a contractor associated with the model village project, to make arrangement for accommodating a number of families they intended to bring in and settle in Nur Goth. They told the contractor that many of the IDP families would have to be ejected from the village to comply with the order given by the feudal lord.

The families currently provided shelter at the village hail from Thatta and Badin districts and belong to the Mallah, Solangi, Sarwan, Samma, Khaskheli, Kumhar, Maheshwari, Jokhio and Abbasi clans. Some Christian families have also been allotted some residential quarters.

Local police did not intervene apparently owing to the involvement of the feudal lord and the notorious gangs acting at his behest, office-bearers of the Nur Welfare Association (NWA), which manages the village affairs, told a press conference at the Thatta press club in the evening.

Nawaz Mallah, Sikandar Solangi, Abdul Aziz and Mithan Samoon, the president, vice president, general secretary and treasurer of the association, respectively, narrated what they described as ‘the invasion’ and called for immediate action by law-enforcement agencies to drive away the armed men and ensure safety and security of IDPs and other people concerned. They said that if appropriate action was not taken against the armed men and their patrons, no donor agency, individual donor or philanthropist would come forward in future to help disaster-hit people.

Failure of the authorities concerned in checking activities of criminals and mafias would obviously encourage such gangs to strike at any place at whim.

Several dozens Nur Goth residents were accompanying the NWA leaders.

They informed the media that PMA leaders including Dr Shershah Syed, Prof Tipu Sultan and Prof Idrees Adhi as well as MDA-UK chairman Dr Syed Yousif Iftikhar had rendered great services and put in unmatched efforts towards raising funds for the project, formally inaugurated by veteran social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi on Dec 15, 2012.The village has many facilities like community, vocational, adult literacy and women development centres, educational institutions, hospital etc within its vicinity for the resident IDPs.

Some of the IDPs present at the press conference said that they knew about the gang, and said it had a history of extortion, kidnapping and other crimes.

They appealed to the Sindh governor, chief minister and the other authorities concerned to intervene into the matter.