July 17, 2008	Thursday	Rajab 13, 1429

SANGHAR, July 16: Ali Ghu-lam Marri and his uncle Abdul Rehman Marri, made notorious by his alleged involvement in kidnapping case of Mannu Bheel’s family, insisted on Wednesday the more than 100 peasants liberated from their lands had put on chains themselves an hour before police raids.

Ali Ghulam flanked by his uncle alleged at a press conference that the bonded labour case was a farce and a bid to gobble up one and a half million rupees they had paid the peasants as advance money for work.

Ali Ghulam claimed that just two days before the raid, he had paid them thousands of rupees and one hundred maunds of wheat.

He was a university graduate and could not even think of running a private jail, he said.

They asked his men to go away before the raid after having already packed up belongings, which proved it was a pre-planned move, he claimed.

He demanded that a commission comprising judges of high courts, Asma Jehangir and journalists should probe the allegations and called for constitution of a board of Karachi-based doctors to examine the legs of freed bonded labourers to ascertain if they had been chained for a longer period.

The forensic evidence would prove beyond doubt if the landlord had kept them chained or they chained themselves hours before the raid, he said.

He accused an NGO and his family’s political opponents of cooking up the case. If the trend continued, it would completely destroy the agriculture of the province, he said.

Rehman Marri, who is also nominated as an accused in the case lodged by the liberated haris, alleged that Mannu had been blackmailing him and claimed he had demanded Rs10 million in return for withdrawing the case.

He said that when he was in jail, police and some members of NGOs conducted raids on his lands but failed to find any private jail. Forensic science could prove the peasants had put on chains themselves, he insisted.

The landlords found support from the district council members who, at the council’s Wednesday session, condemned growing number of cases of bonded labour and termed them deliberate acts aimed at harming the province’s agriculture. They accused some NGOs of using the cases to get foreign aid at the cost of agriculture.

Umer Khan, Mohammad Ismail Dars, Luqman Chandio, Tahira Khatoon and Rao Imam Din alleged that the government was victimising its opponents and described private jails as a drama staged deliberately to harm its political opponents.

They said the poor were committing suicide, mothers were giving away their children to orphanages and there was no writ of government in any place.