ISLAMABAD, 31 March 2007 — Tension mounted in the Punjab town of Rahim Yar Khan yesterday following the manhandling of district council officials by police late on Wednesday. The officials, called nazims, who belong to the Pagara group of the Pakistan Muslim League, were manhandled by the police at a public meeting they were holding to rally support for Shah Mahmud, a nephew of Pir Pagara.
The police ransacked the venue of the rally and detained 500 workers of the Pagara group.
The Pakistan Muslim League (Pagara group) has good support in Sindh and provincial Chief Minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim belongs to that party.
Pir Pagara and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the president of the ruling PML, have been at odds since 1978.
Rahim Yar Khan is located on the Sindh-Punjab border and the majority of people living there are Saraiki speakers. Former district council official Fakhar Mahmud Akbar Kanju died in police custody. Police said his death was caused by heart attack but postmortem report revealed he died due to torture.
District Health Officer Shahid Saleem told journalists, “A three-member board of doctors conducted the autopsy on Kanju and found torture wounds on different parts of his body.”
Taleban Free School Principal
Taleban militants yesterday freed the principal of a high school who was kidnapped four days ago for stopping the rebels recruiting his students, his family said.
Farid Mehsud, principal of the Oxford Public School in Tank and his brother Humayun were abducted by about a dozen gunmen from his house on Tuesday.
“I have received a telephone call from a tribal jirga (council of elders) that both of them have been released,” their brother Khurshid told reporters in Tank.
