TOBA TEK SINGH, Feb 11: A large number of gypsies of nearby villages brought traffic to a standstill for some three hours on Toba-Chichawatni Road on Monday to protest the killing of their 13 people what they claimed in a staged encounter by the Sahiwal police in early hours of Sunday.

The protesters also set fire to used tyres and staged a sit-in right in the middle of the road. They later dispersed when DSP Chaudhry Muhammad Sharif along with a heavy police contingent reached there and assured them that the matter would be looked at.

Protesters said that their villages, 336-GB (Saraba) and 335-GB, were situated some 12 kilometers from here. They said the Sahiwal police had arrested their 13 relatives, who were killed in the staged encounter on Sunday, after a raid on Feb 7 for their alleged involvement in a dacoity case.

They said the police had falsely implicated their relatives in the dacoity case. The claimed that they had refused a Sahiwal police offer for the retrieval of the bodies and instead demanded the arrest of the policemen involved in mowing down of their relatives.

When contacted, DSP Chaudhry Sharif said that he was unaware of the arrest of gypsies and that he only knew about their killing in the encounter on Monday.

SAHIWAL: The post-mortem examination of 13 alleged bandits of Chak 133/9-L was carried out at the DHQ Hospital here on Monday. The local municipal administration later arranged their burial. After declaring unclaimed, all the deceased were buried in the Mahi Shah graveyard. Deceased Muhammad Anwar was also laid to rest when his relatives refused to receive his body.