KARACHI, Nov 30: The Pakistan Minority Inquilabi Tehrik (PMIT) has expressed concern over the murder of an eyewitness to the Bahawalpur killings and has demanded that the culprits be arrested immediately.

At a press conference here on Friday, the PMIT chief, Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, said Benjamin John, who had witnessed the carnage in the Bahawalpur church, was employed in a government organization and posted at Quetta.

He said the government soon after the Bahawalpur incident had announced that the killers would be arrested in a few days, but more than two months had passed and the real culprits had not yet been arrested.

He criticized the government for not taking steps to provide effective security cover for the eyewitness to the Sept 29 incident in which 16 Christians had been gunned down while praying in the church.

He said, on the one hand, the government had failed to provide security to an eyewitness to the gory incident, and on the other the killers had struck once again and killed the eyewitness in Quetta as he could have been an important witness for the prosecution.

He demanded that full protection be provided to the rest of the eyewitnesses so that they could give their statements in court when the culprits were arrested.

The former member of the Sindh Assembly also demanded an immediate arrest of all those involved in the carnage. He said unrest was spreading among the minorities due to “the indifferent attitude of the government in pursuing the case” as the culprits had not yet been arrested.

He also called for the abolition of separate electorates, and demanded that the next elections be held on the basis of joint electorate.

He said results of all the past elections had shown that all the Christian MNAs had been from Punjab, while all the Hindu MNAs had been from Sindh. He said since their constituencies comprised all over the country, their voters could not reach them immediately.

Mr Khokhar said till the time the joint electorate system was restored, smaller constituencies be carved out so that the representatives could be nearer to their voters.

Referring to the recent Indian visit of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, he said when a military dictator could visit India, why a leading politician, who had been twice elected prime minister, could not visit India.