OKARA: After 55-long hours blockade of the GT Road, tenants of the Anjuman-i-Mazareen Punjab (AMP) cleared the highway following successful dialogues with the officials of the district administration and police here on Thursday night.

Reports said that PML-N MNA Nadeem Abbas Rubera, Sahiwal RPO Ghulam Mehmood Dogar, Sahiwal DPO Syed Baqar Raza, Okara DCO Kaisar Saleem and Okara DPO Muhammad Faisal Rana held out assurance to AMP representatives Chaudhry Abdullah Tahir and Hafiz Hasnain Raza that all cases against tenants, including the arrested Kulyana State activist, Hafiz Jabir, would be investigated on merit.

The Okara DPO said that magistrate Zafar Iqbal Khokhar had given a four-day physical remand of Hafiz Jabir to police and he could not be released at present.

The AMP representatives also agreed to get cleared the Deepalpur-Pakpattan Road blockade at Sukhpur Town.

Earlier, the enraged tenants, both men and women and armed with batons and clubs, continued blocking the GT Road near the railway level-crossing in village 3/4L.

Inspector Mahr Ismail told reporters that protesting tenants had injured two constables Asghar Ali and Israrul Haq with gunshot fires.

He said the Okara DPO visited the DHQ Hospital to inquire after the injured constables.

However, the AMP leaders denied the occurrence of any such incident.

Over 55-hour blockade has left filing stations of the city dried as no fuel supply could be made possible.

The Satghara police had arrested 16 AMP-KS activists, Ishaq, Iqbal, Irfan, Hassan, Iqbal, Naeem, Shaan, Muhammad Hussain, Iftikhar Ahmad, Shamshad Ahmad, Sanaullah, Sarwar, Muhammad Siddique, Yaseen, Shahbaz and Noor Jhakhar.

Police had also nabbed eight AMP activists -- Intizar, Muhammad Bukhsh, Khawar, Tariq, Muhammad Ali, Qaiser, Muhammad Arif and Muhammad Sadiq -- from military farms in Okara.

AMP secretary-general Mehr Abdus Sattar told this correspondent on phone that the AMP was forced to block the road because the district administration and the police turned a deaf ear to problems faced by tenants.

He said it was due to the pathetic attitude of the district administration and police that the situation had gone to that extent.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2015

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