March 31, 2006	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 1, 1427

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THATTA, March 30: Traffic on the Sujawal-Hyderabad road remained suspended for about three hours as enraged villagers blocked the road by putting the body of a villager, Hussain Khan Leghari, and staging a sit-in here on Thursday morning.

Hussain Khan Leghari, 73, a peasant had allegedly been tortured to death by the Sujawal police during a raid on the Abdullah Khan Leghari village to arrest culprits involved in an incident of robbery on Wednesday night.

In the incident, 12 highwaymen equipped with arms took away a Karachi-bound bus in nearby thick woods at gunpoint, deprived passengers of their cash and valuables worth lakhs of rupees, ruthlessly tortured passengers and vanished.

Sujawal TPO Rashid Serai, however, denying the allegations told Dawn that the highway police contingent while in pursuit to arrest outlaws involved in the bus robbery when arrived at the Abdullah Leghari village they found that the villagers already wailing saying that their old man had died due to heart attack.

The villagers said that none of the villagers had ever been involved in any crime in the past and police was attempting to hush up its crime through a fabricated story.

GUTTED: At least 25 kutcha huts were reduced to ashes as fire broke out in the Saleh Burfat village on the Jung Shahi Road on Thursday morning.