UMERKOT, Sept 26: A team of revenue officials and a large police contingent were attacked on Thursday by land grabbers in Ratnor village where they had gone to clear 200 acres of communal land from illegal settlements.

The land grabbers had set up barriers before the illegal shops and when the revenue staff tried to remove them gunmen sitting on top of nearby sand dunes opened fire on them. Even though a heavy police contingent, comprising between 40 and 50 policemen, was accompanying the revenue team, the policemen instead of retaliating fire retreated to take cover as soon as the firing began.

The revenue officials had to abandon their mission and return. No one was hurt.

A case was lodged against Muhammad Azeem Samejo and five others at the the Khokhrapar police station on the complaint of Umerkot mukhtiarkar Azizur Rehman Kalhoro.

However, the Khokhrapar SHO was suspended for failing to protect the revenue officials. Around 21 other policemen were also issued show-cause notices by the Umerkot SSP.

The suspects are said to be affiliated with the Ghosia Jamaat which called for a shutter-down strike in Umerkot city after the incident to protest over registration of cases against its activists. Consequently, all bazaars and commercial areas in Umerkot remained shut from the afternoon till the evening.

Umerkot taluka president of Ghosia Jamaat Arbab Samejo said that all encroachment cases had been lodged against their workers while encroachments by Pakistan Peoples Party workers went unnoticed. He termed the incident as an example of ‘political victimisation’.

The revenue department recently launched a drive to reclaim encroached lands in Thar on the directives of Sindh chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah. Taking notice of the news reports regarding illegal occupation of communal lands published in various newspapers, he had ordered the Mirpurkhas DIG, commissioner and deputy commissioners of Umerkot and Tharparkar districts to look into the matter and get these lands evacuated.

According to a survey conducted by revenue officials, around 50,000 acres of communal land in eight union councils of Umerkot district had been illegally occupied by influential people, said Umerkot mukhtiarkar Azizur Rehman Kalhoro.

He said that during the anti-encroachment drive around 18 cases had been registered against land grabbers and 50 illegal estates had been razed to the ground.

He said that a case had also been registered against Muhammad Azeem Samejo and his five accomplices and they were also charge-sheeted. However, they had refused to vacate the lands after which the locals approached the revenue officials, he added.