KARACHI: Some senior leaders along with around 2,000 workers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement were on Friday booked for holding a rally near the Quaid’s mausoleum without permission, misuse of loudspeakers and rioting, officials said.

On Nov 26, the Muttahida Qaumi Mov­ement took out a huge rally and staged a sit-in when police stopped it from marching further towards Jinnah Courts, the headquarters of the paramilitary Rangers, in protest over frequent raids and arrests of party workers.

Jamshed Town SP Dr Fahad Ahmed said that the case was registered on behalf of the state against senior Muttahida Qaumi Movement leaders and workers. “They all were booked under the defined laws for blocking roads and staging a rally without permission that made the situation vulnerable and caused a severe traffic jam.”

The Soldier Bazaar police registered a case (FIR 416/15) against Dr Farooq Sattar, Waseem Akhtar, Nasreen Jalil, Wasay Jalil, Faisal Subzwari, Haider Abbas Rizvi, Kanwar Naveed Jameel, Muhammad Hussain, Kamal Pasha and 1,500/2,000 ‘un­kn­own’ MQM workers.

The FIR was lodged under Sections 147 (rioting), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 6/7 of the Sindh Sound (Reg­ulation) Act, 2015, commonly known as the Loudspeaker Act.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2015