November 06, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 24, 1428

LAHORE, Nov 5: Police crackdown on lawyers and opposition parties continued on the second consecutive day on Monday and some of those detained during the last 48 hours were sent to different jails with detention orders.

Police remained deployed outside the houses and offices of those politicians and lawyers who had reportedly went underground to avoid arrests.

The police, in some cases, raided houses of PML-N and PTI activists and after failing to nab them, picked their male family members.

“Lahore police have raided at least 250 places during the last 24 hours, and picked family members of party leaders and workers who had gone underground,” PML-N MPA Bilal Yaseen, who had also gone into hiding, told Dawn by phone.

A police official told Dawn, requesting anonymity; the crackdown had now been scaled down after two days of arrests in which prominent lawyers were targeted.

HRCP: Around 55 detained human right activists, including 22 women, were produced before a magistrate in Model Town courts on Monday after a case under section 16 of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) and sections 146/147 and 188 of the PPC was registered against them by Garden Town police.

Later, they were shifted to the Kot Lakhpat Jail on the order of the magistrate, from where all of them were taken to two adjacent houses in Gulberg, which had been declared sub-jails.

Two leading activists IA Rehman and Iqbal Haider were later shifted to the Gulberg residence of HRCP chairperson Asma Jehangir, who was still under house arrest.