KOHAT: Riot police were called to control the students of Kohat University of Science and Technology who demonstrated here on Monday to demand start of summer semester to make up for their failed papers.

The students belonging to all the faculties also boycotted Monday’s papers and came out of the university campus on the Indus Highway chanting slogans against the varsity administration. The hide and seek between the students and the police continued from 8am to 12pm, during which period, the highway remained blocked for all kind of traffic.

The students who boycotted examination said their protest was against delay in introduction of summer semester. However, they said nobody from the administration had turned up for holding talks with them.

The varsity administration takes the plea that in the absence of a permanent vice chancellor such a major change couldn’t be made and that it had to stick to the existing schedule of examination.

The students said other universities arranged a semester during summer vacations to let students clear the previous failed papers, but the Kohat varsity was refusing to do so.

The police personnel accompanied by armoured personnel carriers and batons entered the university to reopen the classrooms and examination hall which were closed by the students, forcing the students to flee by jumping over the boundary wall. The students living in the hostels also closed the varsity’s main gate.

WEAPONS, DRUGS SEIZED: The special squads of police seized weapons and hashish being smuggled from the tribal areas to down country and arrested five suspects, two women among them, on Monday.

A special squad during snap checking stopped a Dera Ismail Khan-bound passenger coach coming from Peshawar at Sor Gul area on the Indus Highway. During search of luggage of two suspicious women, the police recovered over seven kilogram hashish hidden in clothes and arrested the women, the police said.

They were identified as Perveen of Peshawar and Yasmeen of Dera Ismail Khan. The Jarma police registered case against them and sent them to prison.

Another police special squad foiled an attempt of smuggling weapons from Darra Adamkhel to Lakki Marwat and arrested three members of an inter-provincial gang of smugglers at the old toll plaza on the Indus Highway.

The suspects were identified as Naqeebullah, Shah Nawaz and Shahid Ullah of Lakki Marwat. The seizure included two 12-bore repeaters, two rifles, two pistols and six chargers, police told Dawn.

The Bilitang police registered case against the suspects and handed them over to investigation branch for interrogation.

During preliminary interrogation the suspects admitted to regularly carrying arms from Darra Adamkhel to the southern districts of KP.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2015

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