KARACHI, March 23: Thousands of people remained stuck on Friday for over seven hours as transporters blocked the main Hub River Road and Northern Bypass to protest against the “highhandedness” of crime branch police.

The protesters burnt old tyres and staged a sit-down on the highway near Yousuf Goth, suspending the vehicular traffic to and from the city.

Eyewitnesses said the trouble started when a team of the crime branch police picked up a driver of an inter-provincial passenger coach and took away his vehicle to their office at Lea Market.

Town Police Officer of Baldia Nauman Siddiqui with a heavy contingent of police reached the spot to help ease the situation. However, the protesters refused to end their protest until the release of the driver.

Police sources said the town police requested the crime branch police to release the driver as thousands of vehicles, including over 300 passenger buses, were queued up bumper-to-bumper for miles. However, they said, the crime branch refused to release the driver. The sources said the driver was, however, released when senior police officers intervened.

Driver Nadir Khan of Imam Jan Coach (LSB-9802) told Dawn that he reached the bus terminal at Yousuf Goth around 8am. “As I got down, a policeman took me to his office-in-charge, Sub-inspector Nawaz Tanoli, who demanded money from me,” he added.

The driver said the crime branch police team took him and his vehicle to their office at Lea Market, where they beat him.

The owner of Al-Ameen Coach, Sultan Mohammed, told Dawn that SI Tanoli reached the Yousuf Goth bus terminal along with his team around 6am. “He first intercepted my brother, Mohammed Ali, who had arrived from Gwadar in our bus, and he demanded money from him”, he added.

The transporter said that the crime branch police made his brother to sit in the mobile van and told him that he would be booked for possessing five kilograms charas and two TT pistols if he did not grease their palms.

Sultan Mohammed said the crime branch team also brutally beat his brothers. He said that he had also shown the marks of torture on the body of his brothers to the town police officer.

He said his brother was released by the crime branch police only after he himself talked to the SI and promised to visit him at his office shortly.

He said the transporters took to the Hub River Road around 9am to protest against the excesses of the crime branch police. He said the main road remained blocked till 4.30pm and the transporters called off their protests only after the crime branch police released the detained driver and his vehicle.

Mohammed Iqbal, another transporter, said that the operators of buses between Karachi and Balochistan had shifted their terminal from Chakiwara to Yousuf Goth two-and-half months ago. He alleged that the SI of the crime branch police would visit them at their previous terminal to extort money on the pretext that Iranian diesel was being smuggled from parts of Balochistan in the passenger buses.