KARACHI, April 23: The Karachi coordination committee of the Pakistan People’s Party at its meeting on Saturday strongly condemned, what it termed,, the ‘barbaric police action’ against PPP workers, implicating them in cases to be tried by Anti-terrorism Court and getting their bails cancelled.

The meeting, held at Bilawal House here, was chaired by Sindh PPP President Syed Qaim Ali Shah and attended by Nisar Ahmed Khuhro and Senator Taj Haider.

They noted with concern that police targeted those who were wearing Ajrak and Sindhi cap in Lahore, and said that the government was deliberately creating hatred among provinces as in Sindh, tempers were high. They expressed shock to note that even the CNICs from Sindh and its capital Karachi were not accepted for the purpose of personal surety in bail of party workers.

The PPP leaders alleged that the arrested party workers had been scattered to different jails of Punjab in order to create problems for their lawyers.

Demanding immediate release of all PPP workers, the committee held out the assurance that all PPP leaders and workers stood solidly behind Ms Benazir Bhutto and would remain ready to obey her orders.

Meanwhile, the PPP Karachi division has accused the Punjab government of trying to harm the federation by treating people of other provinces as ‘enemies’ and at the same time garlanding the visitors from an Indian province.

In a statement, the PPP’s divisional chief Rashid Rabbani and General-Secretary Rafiq Engineer said that PPP workers from Sindh had been brutally tortured and their cases referred to ATA despite the fact that not a single stone-pelting or arson incident had been reported from Lahore upon the arrival of Senator Asif Ali Zardari.

They said they were running from pillar to post to locate the missing PPP workers, including women, who had gone to Lahore from Karachi but reportedly shifted to jails in Faisalabad, Sahiwal and other far-flung areas.

“We consider Punjab government as unrepresentative and autocratic whose policies are not supported by the Punjabis,” they said.

PPP MPAs Sassui Palijo, Rafiq Engineer and Nawab Wassan have condemned the manhandling of Abdul Waheed Bhutto, an Assistant Professor at Dawood College of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, by some activists of the students wing of an ethnic organization.

They pointed out that only a few days back, principal of the college Prof Mohammad Saleem Chaudhry had been murdered and now the incident of manhandling of Prof Bhutto had further increased the sense of insecurity among the teaching community in Karachi.