OKARA City News

GT Road blocked to get Okara tenant activist released
Hafiz Jabbar was arrested in murder case; commuters
suffer as thousands of vehicles still stuck
From Our Correspondent
OKARA: The supporters of Anjuman-e-Punjab (AMP) - a body representing tenants - on Wednesday blocked the GT Road, demanding the release of Hafiz Jabbar who was arrested by police on the murder charges a day earlier.
Hafiz is an activist from Kulyana Estate. He was wanted by the Okara Sadr police in a murder case - FIR No 555/15 under sections 302, 148, 149 of the PPC - registered on the application of Lal Masih - the brother of Shaukat Masih, the deceased.
The tenants of the Okara Military Farms (OMF) and Kulyana Estate had received information about his arrest late on Tuesday night. After midnight, the protesters gathered at the railway crossing near Chak 3/4L in the OMF area to stage demonstration.
The AMP general secretary, Mehr Abdus Sattar, told reporters that the protesters waited for the police to hold negotiations till 1am for about two hours but no one from the district administration or police contacted them. Later, they blocked the GT Road as their protest continued till 1pm on Wednesday afternoon, he added.
According to Sattar, three DSPs - Tariq Zafar, Farooq Kamyana and Iqbal Zafar - negotiated with the AMP on behalf of the district police chief and the regional police officer. They promised to release Hafiz within one hour after the restoration of traffic.
The protesters end the blockade from 1pm to 4pm, waiting for the release of Hafiz, but they blocked the road again as he was not released even after three hours. The protest is still in progress till the filing of this report as hundreds of tenants - both men and women - carrying batons and clubs parked tractor-trolleys on the road and the railway level crossing.
On the other hand, DPO Faisal Rana told the press that Sahiwal RPO Ghulam Mehmood Dogar had summoned the related record and pledged to the tenants that he would take decision on all the cases within two days, if the road was reopened=. But the tenants backtracked and blocked the GT Road again, he added.
The DPO said cases had already been registered against Hafiz with four police stations including Okara Cant and Sadr, Satghara and Gogera. One these cases, one was registered on the murder charges and five under 7-ATA, while 14 others were related to theft/others.
According to people, the AMP, during the last seven or eight years, has immediately blocked the GT Road whenever unrest rose among the tenants.
This repeated action badly damages the reputation of Okara, as thousands of passengers experience great hardships on this busy highway connecting the south and north of the country.
Although, the police had diverted traffic to branch roads from Sahiwal in the west and Renala Khurd in the east, thousands of vehicles are still stuck on the GT Road.