THATTA: Manuscripts, relics stolen from Thatta library
By Our Correspondent
THATTA, May 13: Five hundred books, some rare manuscripts, relics, paintings and furniture of the Pir Hussamuddin Rashidi Library in Makli were found missing on Monday.
The library management informed the Makli police about the incident but the police neither visited the site nor registered any FIR.
Allah Warayo Khaskheli, president of the Makli Cultural and Educational Society, which had established the library, has urged the authorities to help recover the stolen things.
About a dozen cases of theft of antiques, relics and pieces of carved stones from the necropolis of Makli and Sonda had been reported to the police stations concerned during the last couple of years but none of the thieves had been arrested.
These historical relics later arrive at the bungalows of the rich people where they are kept as decoration pieces.
In 1991, two masterpieces of engraved stone were found missing from the Makli necropolis. The stones were shifted by the then deputy commissioner to the district council office in Makli.
The Sindh archaeology department made several attempts to convince the district council and shift the stones back to their original place but did not succeeded.
INJURED: Some half a dozen villagers, including two children, were injured as the police resorted to baton-charge in the Ramzan Otho village, near Chuhar Jamali, on Tuesday.
The villagers had offered resistance to the police which wanted to recover a woman, Meher Bano, wife of Abdullah Otho, on the complaint of her father, Manzoor Burfat, resident of Karachi, who had stated that his daughter had been missing for the last seven years.
The villagers, however, said that they had found Bano in the Civil Hospital, Makli, and she had told them that she was an orphan and needed shelter. Later, she was married to Mr Otho.
On the arrival of the heavy contingent of the police, the villagers told them to negotiate on the matter but the police insisted on taking away the woman, to which the villagers offered resistance, leading to baton-charge.
Finally the police returned without taking the woman away.
Those injured includes Naziran, 5, Maqbool Otho, 6, Abdullah and Bachoo.pl add to thatta story
Later, the police again raided the village and picked up five villagers who were released afterwards on the intervention of an influential person who assured the police that the matter would be resolved in a private way.
