January 01, 2007	Monday	Zilhaj 10, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 31: Opposition members belonging to the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) have submitted an adjournment motion to the National Assembly Secretariat, seeking discussion on the incident in which police manhandled the family members of the missing persons when they were trying to hold a demonstration outside the Army General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi on Thursday.

According to ARD parliamentary secretary Izhar Amrohvi, the motion has been submitted under Rule 92 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly 1992 and it carried the signatures of 11 opposition MNAs, belonging to People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N).

The opposition members in their motion state, “Police broke up a protest demonstration organised by family members and relatives of missing persons, badly manhandled and arrested several of them after they tried to march to the GHQ to present a memorandum”.

According to eyewitnesses, the protest took a turn for the worse when the police stripped a young man, Mohammad bin Masood, the son of missing Masood Janjua.

Eye-witnesses said even then the police continued to drag him, finally throwing him into a police van. The witnesses further said besides an old man and Mohammad bin Masood, several women had been molested, beaten and thereafter detained.

Through the motion, the opposition members declared that “the police force had vehemently violated fundamental rights guaranteed in Chapter One of the Constitution” of Pakistan.

The motion has been signed by Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, Raja Pervez Ashraf, Sherry Rehman, Naheed Khan, Syed Khurshid Shah, Syed Naveed Qamar, Qamaruz Zaman Kaira, Fauzia Habib and Syed Nayyar Bokhari of the PPP and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Khawaja Mohammad Asif of the PML-N.