MULTAN, Aug 8: The construction company building Kachhi canal in Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan districts threatened to strike work to protest the abduction of its workers and `partisan’ attitude of the local authorites.

D-Baloch construction company spokesman Mian Tariq Mehmood alleged that the Rajanpur district coordination officer Samiullah Abid and district police officer Maqsoodul Hasan were pressurising them to strike a deal with the abductors instead of taking the culprits to task.

He said three of their workers were still in the captivity of the abductors who were demanding Rs15m for their release. The kidnappers, they said, had contacted them thrice on Tuesday to demand ransom.

DCO Samiullah Abid, on the other hand, denied that the administration had ever asked the construction company officials to patch up with the accused. He said, however, an abduction case could not be registered straightway merely on accusations. “We have to see that the cause of justice is upheld in any case,” he added.

He said the construction company workers had been taken into custody by the border military police on a case registered against them for carrying away stones and gravel illegally from a private property. The DCO said that he had ordered the BMP commandant to probe veracity of the case. “The wrongdoers will be punished if the case proves fabricated,” he maintained.

It may be added here that the D-Baloch construction company workers had blocked Indus highway near Fazilpur and Quetta road near Dera Ghazi Khan on Sunday night in protest against the alleged abduction of their 52 colleagues from the Meerapur site in Rajanpur district. BMP official Shahid Gurchani and his fellow tribesmen were accused of abducting the protesters.

When the blockade caused long queues of vehicles on the inter-provincial roads, the abductors reportedly released 49 of the kidnapped in phases.

Later, accused Shahid Gurchani claimed that the construction workers had in fact been arrested in a case registered with BMP’s Khumbi post. The complainant in the case, Amjad Gurchani, is said to be the brother of Shahid Gurchani.

The company management, however, termed the case an afterthough on part of the BMP official to cover up his illegal act. Company spokesman Mian Tariq said the work on Meerapur site of the Kachhi canal had already been stopped since the abduction of the workers and seizure of earthmoving machinery by the tribesmen, while work on the Dera Ghazi Khan site would be suspended if the Rajanpur administration could not recover the three abducted workers after registration of a case against the culprits.

Meanwhile, Sher Ali Gurchani, the union council nazim of the area from where construction company workers were abducted, in a press statement condemned the act of BMP official saying that his family was the lease-holder of the land from where the D-Baloch construction company lifted stones and gravel and that they had no complaint against it.