22 April 2005	Friday	12 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

MULTAN, April 21: Three tenants and as many police officials were injured in a clash between law-enforcement personnel and tenants of the Okara Military Farms on Thursday. The clash erupted when personnel of the military’s 40-Div, accompanied by a heavy police contingent, entered Chak 15/4-L for harvesting wheat they had sown on their own over 54 acres.

The OMF tenants had reportedly warned that they would resist the military personnel if they might come to harvest the crop because the authorities were not allowing them (tenants) to reap the crop they had raised in the same area over some 65 acres.

When the army men started harvesting, hundreds of OMF tenants rushed to the area to stop them from doing so. At this, the police baton-charged the highly-charged tenants and later the law enforcers threw teargas shells to disperse the protesters.

The tenants retaliated by pelting police and military personnel with stones.

Reports reaching here revealed that three tenants and as many policemen, including Okara Cantonment police SHO Rana Liaquat, suffered injuries.

The police action, however, compelled the agitating tenants to leave the area and consequently the officials harvested the crop. The tenants later gathered around the GT Road and the railway track nearby.

They chanted slogans against the police and the OMF management and vowed to continue their struggle for their ownership rights against the lands they claimed that their forefathers had been cultivating for nearly a century.

The land where the clash took place was once under the management of the Military Welfare Trust. However, the trust reportedly vacated possession over it recently after being aggravated from the tenants’ movement. Later, the 40-Div of the military took it over and had sown wheat for the first time.