HYDERABAD, Oct 11: The former Pakistan People’s Party’s information secretary Hyderabad district, Sheba Zardari, and her husband, Amir Zardari, protesting their expulsion from the party said that if they were not reinstated, they would go on a hunger strike till death from Oct 13.

Speaking at a news conference here at the press club on Saturday, Ms Sheba Zardari said that a news item published in a section of press quoting a spokesman for the PPP Sindh as saying that she and her husband had nothing to do with the PPP.

She said they had not been issued any show-cause notice nor had been asked to submit any explanation for their supposed acts of malfeasance or misfeasance.

She said that committed workers could not be expelled from the party in this manner. “We have been punished unheard,” she deplored.

She claimed that her husband had raised his voice for the poor who had not been given zakat money. She alleged that the district leadership of the party, Amanullah Siyal, and Sher Mohammad Pirzada, had not paid a single penny to the poor people out of Rs40.5 million zakat fund and added that Rs20 million out of this fund had lapsed.

She said that these leaders had claimed to have distributed Rs6,550 each to 3,680 poor people from the zakat fund, which was false. She said that her husband had raised voice against the embezzlement of zakat money and that was the reason that he was being punished. She asked the party leadership to explain as to what was her fault.

“I have been imprisoned and subjected to baton-charge and teargas shelling for the sake of the party yet I have been expelled from the party”, Sheba Zardari lamented.

She challenged the party leadership to a debate to prove any charges against her or her husband. She said she had ample proof in her possession about land grabbers and extortionist elements within the party and demanded that an inquiry committee should be constituted comprising writers and media personnel to probe into the supposed allegations against her and her husband.

She appealed to the president and prime minister of Pakistan, Ms Faryal Talpur and Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah to order an impartial inquiry into the matter.