MIRPURKHAS, Nov 4: A young man and a police constable were killed when police surrounded a village, apparently in pursuit of dacoits, and faced armed resistance from local residents in Basham Brohi village within the remit of the Sindhri police station in Mirpurkhas district on Sunday.

Station House Officer of the Dilber Maher police station Sadiq Dars said that a strong contingent of police was sent to the village on a tip-off about presence of some dacoits there. He said that raids were carried out at various places within the village to arrest the dacoits but villagers armed with clubs and automatic weapons attacked the police party. He gave no further details, and said that no case was registered against the attackers.

However, the villagers stated that the police attacked their houses at the behest of an influential landowner, who had an old land dispute with some residents of the area.

Balach Brohi, Asghar Brohi and Farooque Brohi told the media that over 60 police mobiles, trucks and an armoured personnel carrier surrounded the village and cordoned off all entry/exit points before carrying out raids on various houses. They alleged that the police opened fire on some villagers wounding several people, including women. The villagers, they said, retaliated by hitting the police vehicles with clubs and stones and some of them also used guns to repulse the police attack.

Reports from the area said that all the wounded victims were taken to the Civil Hospital Mirpurkhas and two of them, Dilmurad, 17, son of Abdul Qadir Brohi, and constable Akbar Shah, were referred to the Liaquat University Hospital, Hyderabad, due to their precarious condition. Both the seriously wounded persons succumbed to their wounds at the hospital, the reports said.

The constable belonged to the Sukkur police and was sent to Mirpurkhas on a special duty under the Muharram security plan.

The villagers stated that they faced great hardship in transporting the wounded victims to the civil hospital due to the police cordon, adding that the police force drawn from various stations had also blocked the main Sindhri-Mirpurkhas road. They accused the police of brutally beating up men, women and children during their operation carried out “at the behest of the landowner”. They said the dispute between some Brohi villagers and the landowner, whom they identified as ‘Junejo’, involved 222 acres of land. They alleged that the landowner had been using the police and other law-enforcement agencies personnel against his rivals in the dispute over the past few months.

Civil hospital sources identified the wounded victims being provided treatment as Imdad, Abdul Qadeer, Ms Nazia, Naseem Begum, Mohammad Mureed, Basheer Ahmed, Abdul Wahid, Ghulam Mohammad and Mohammad Siddique — all Brohis by caste.

Villagers protest

Several hundred villagers carrying the body of Dilmurad Brohi march through the streets of Basham Brohi village and converged on a section of the main Sindhri-Mirpurkhas road to hold a noisy demonstration outside the Dilber Maher police station after the police force withdrew from the area. Their protest kept flow of vehicular traffic on the road suspended for several hours. The protesters were demanding registration of a murder case against the landowner, his manager and the policemen involved in the action.

The road was yet to be reopened for traffic till the last report came in late in the evening.

Meanwhile, civil society and human rights activists held a demonstration in front of the Mirpurkhas Press Club on Sunday against the police action. Led by Kanji Rano Bheel and Sher Mohammad Solangi, the protesters carried banners and placards inscribed with slogans against the police and the landowner.

Raising slogans against the police, they called for a judicial inquiry into the whole affair and supported the villagers’ demand of registering a murder case against all those involved in the police action.

They urged the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the police action and order a judicial inquiry into the affair.