LAHORE, July 23: The Labour Party will hold a protest rally in the city on Friday against kidnappings for ransom being carried out allegedly by the Rangers on Okara military farms.

Party secretary-general Farooq Tariq said at a press conference here on Wednesday the protesters would march from the Lahore Press Club up to the Governor’s House to demand the release of 10 people “kidnapped” by the Rangers on July 6.

“It is a critical situation as both the Rangers and police had denied before the high court that they were in their custody.”

Anjuman Mazareen Punjab chairman Liaquat Ali, Okara district secretary David Zahid, James Maseeh and parents of some of the captives were also present on the occasion.

They said three bailiff of the Lahore High Court raided the Rangers headquarters in Okara on July 18 but the captives were removed from there before the raid.

However, Razia, wife of Abdus Sattar, one of the 10 captives, identified a cycle lying there as that of her husband’s. To prove her claim she brought its receipt from her nearby house. Many people present on the premises told the bailiff that the prisoners were being kept there before the raid, they added.

The parents feared that they could kill their sons and bury the bodies at some undisclosed place as Rangers’ representative Maj Tahir Khattak had submitted before the LHC that they were not in their custody.

Repeatedly requesting the government to put an end to human rights violations on the military farms, Mr Ali threatened countrywide protests and rallies if the captives were not released soon.

Condemning arrest of sons-in-law of tenants, he said under what law the “law-enforcing” agencies were torturing the people for the recovery of lease amount from those who were not even tenants.

Declaring the Rangers as unlawful management of the farms, he asked the Punjab government, the real owner of the land, to hold talks with the tenants to settle the issue continuing for the last over two years.

About the legal aspect of the issue, tenants’ counsel Shakeel Pasha said under Section 4, Sub-section 2 of the Land Revenue Act, no leaseholder could sub-let state land, thus the Rangers’ claim that they were bona fide leaseholders of Okara farms stood as false.

He alleged that Rangers and secret agencies’ officials would made their presence visible in courts to terrify the tenants and their families who approached courts as a last resort to get justice.

The agencies were also harassing his family by asking them by phones not to send him (Pasha) to court to plead tenants cases, he maintained.

Asked as to how he had determined that the callers were from some agency, he said the CLI device of his phone did not detect the calling party’s number, a facility which was available only on secret agencies phones lines.

Meanwhile, tenants have decided to hold rallies, demonstrations and block roads throughout the country on Aug 24, the first death anniversary of Salman Maseeh who had been shot dead reportedly by the Rangers during a long siege of tenants villages on Okara farms last year.