December 18, 2006	Monday	Ziqa'ad 26, 1427

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MULTAN, Dec 17: The victims of the Khanewal operation clean-up are observing black day on Monday (today) to express resentment against the district administration for demolishing their houses without any prior notice and killing one of the residents by the police.

“We are observing the black day against the district administration and have invited President Pervez Musharraf to lend ear to our grievances during his visit to Khanewal. We request the president to punish all those responsible for demolishing our houses and they include the Khanewal district nazim, the district coordination officer, the district police officer, the executive district officer (revenue) and the deputy district officer (revenue),” Mahboob Husain, one of the victims, told Dawn.

Braving inclement weather while spending days and nights on the rubble of the shattered houses, he said, the families were also being harassed by the administration.

Perveen Bibi, a widow and mother of Nazeer Muhammad who succumbed to the injuries the police had inflicted on him during the operation, told Dawn on phone that the law enforcers were forcing her to give a statement that her son had not fallen prey to the police atrocity. She said she had moved to some other place to avoid the police.

She said the newspapers carried the picture of her son being beaten up by the police, but “everyone has kept the eyes shut”.

“I have lost all hope of getting justice and haven’t even gone for an FIR. All I can do is to leave the case to the court of Allah Almighty,” said the restless mother.

DPO Shahid Haneef told this correspondent that he had no idea about the allegations levelled against the police, but he would certainly probe the matter.

Meanwhile, five of the residents of Nizamabad, including Rana Nazarat Ali, Muhammad Ismail, Muhammad Yousaf and Perveen Bibi, have filed a petition through Advocate Sagheer Ahmad Bhatti with the Lahore High Court’s Multan Bench against the administration.

The petitioners stated that they had been living on the land for the past 20 to 25 years and had expended whatever resources they had on their homes, requesting the court to restrain the administration from displacing them.

They also requested that a judicial inquiry be ordered and the officials involved in the operation directed to compensate the affected families.

The Khanewal district administration had launched an operation clean-up against the houses built on the proposed lawyers’ colony on Dec 7 and there was a probability that the extreme step had been taken in response to the lawyers’ alleged assault on DDO (revenue) Zia Ahmad Shami a day earlier.