MULTAN, March 27: Former caretaker prime minister Mir Balakh Sher Mazari has demanded a judicial probe into the state of law and order in Rojhan tehsil of Rajanpur district.

In an open letter written to Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi, Mr Mazari urged him to visit Rojhan to see himself the situation prevailing in the area owing to, what he termed, criminal negligence of the law enforcers to apprehend Bugtis.

Giving history of the Mazari-Bugti dispute, he said it started over an unjustified claim of Bugti tribe on the sand and gravel situated in the Mazari area which were to be used in the construction of 110-kilometre-long piece of Indus Highway passing through the Mazari area as well.

He said on his tribe’s repeated requests for the demarcation of the Punjab-Balochistan border, a meeting was held in Kashmore, Sindh, with the then federal petroleum minister Anwar Saifullah in the chair in early 1990s. Punjab chief secretary Hafeez Akhtar Randhawa also attended the meeting as provincial home secretary. The meeting, however, remained inconclusive.

With the start of work on Indus Highway in 1993 in the area, Turkish and Japanese contractors started paying royalty to the Mazaris for sand and gravel which frustrated the Bugtis and their associates in the Mazari Tribe. The Bugtis started armed assaults in the Punjab.

He said so far 37 people, including a senior police official, had been killed in the Bugtis attacks and more than 87 people had either injured or kidnapped since 1994. Besides, around 20 tractors and several other vehicles had also been snatched from the Mazaris and the people of other clans by the Bugtis.

He said on the one hand the Rajanpur police had been badly failed to check Bugti intruders in the Punjab, while on the other they had started picking up Mazari notables without giving any reason.

Mr Mazari alleged that the arrests of Mazaris were in fact politically-motivated at the behest of MNA Nasrullah Dareshak and Punjab Assembly deputy speaker Shaukat Mazari.

The Mazari chief regretted that the Balochistan government was patronizing the Bugtis but the Punjab government was paying no attention to their requests on the grounds that it was infighting between the Baloch tribes.