March 03, 2008	Monday	Safar 24, 1429

GUJRAT, March 2: Two people were shot dead while six others, including three women, were injured by at least 11 assailants allegedly over old enmity in Dhal Bangash locality in Dinga police precincts on Saturday night.The assailants stormed the house of their rival Azhar Iqbal and resorted to indiscriminate firing, killing Azhar’s relative Muhammad Asghar and his 20-year-old son Saddam Hussein on the spot. Six people including a guest and three women of the family sustained bullet injuries and were later hospitalised.

The police registered a case against Sajjad Hussain, Arif, Ansar, Ejaz, Riaz, Muhammad Zaman and five others and arrested one Ansar. Further investigations are underway.

SEALED: The district food controller (DFC) has sealed three flourmills for flouting the ban on selling flour to other districts.

Sources in the food department told Dawn that following the directives of higher authorities, DFC Mian Riazuddin paid surprise visit to Nageena flourmill, Shahdaula flourmill and Nazim flourmill. He found that ban imposed on selling flour to other districts was being flouted on which these three mills were immediately sealed.

BOOKED: The Karianwala police have booked around 30 people including, a local journalist, under terrorism act for their staging a demonstration in front of the police station to protest the arrest of two men and later manhandling some policemen.

One of the prime suspects, an expatriate Pakistani who was arrested along with his comrade by the police for scuffling with police at a picket, however, said that the case was an outcome of political rivalry as he had supported a PML-N candidate despite he was told by the Karianwala station house officer (SHO) not to do so.

The police had arrested one Khalid Butt, a United States-based expatriate Pakistani, and his friend Shahzad Butt when they protested police’s behaviour at a picket installed near Jallalpur Chowk.

When the locals heard about the incident that policemen had manhandled Khalid Butt, they gathered in front of Karianwala police station. The shopkeepers of the locality also closed down their shops to protest the incident and rushed to the demonstration scene.

A mob of around 50 people later demonstrated against what they called “police’s callousness” and chanted slogans.

Some protesters also scuffled with the police in the event the police later termed “an attack launched by Khalid Butt’s hoodlums.”

A Gujrat-based correspondent of an Urdu daily, Arshad Butt, who is a close relative of Khalid Butt, Arif Butt, Shahzad Butt and 25 others were later booked on a report filed by constable Sajjad Ahmed.

Arshad, however, denied his involvement in the incident and said that he was present at the scene only to perform his professional duties.

He said that the police deliberately booked him to press him to leave Khalid Butt in a lurch but he would not succumb to the pressure.

Talking to Dawn, Khalid Butt said that he had supported a PML-N candidate Shabbir Gondal during his electioneering for the Feb 18 general elections despite SHO Ghulam Sarwar’s threats to abandon supporting PML-N candidate. He said that’s why the SHO had developed grudge against him and the registration of terrorism case against him was an effort by the SHO to settle an old score with him.