KARACHI, Sept 3 Around 25 personnel of the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) on Wednesday stormed the SITE Industrial Area office of the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) and beat up several officers and employees of the utility, police said on Thursday.

However, the KESC staff overpowered and locked them up in a room, and called out the area police. Subsequently, an FIR (No.301/2009) was lodged against the attackers under Sections 147, 148, 452 and 337-A (i) of the Pakistan Penal Code at the SITE-B police station on the complaint of KESC network manager Abid Jameel.The complainant stated that he had been serving in the KESC for 25 years and was, at present, posted at the SITE office as a network manager. He further stated that some four to five days back, the FWO men had lodged a complaint about theft of a cable providing electricity to their workplace. They requested fixing of the cable and restoration of the power supply.

“On their complaint, our survey department visited the scene and assessed that an estimated 125 kilos of cable would be required. The FWO men were advised to lodge an FIR with the police station concerned about the cable theft and provide a copy of the FIR to the KESC so that the work to replace the cable could be started. On Wednesday morning, two FWO men came to the KESC office and insisted that the work be done without an FIR being lodged but they were told to follow the procedure.

“However, at around 4.30pm on the same day, some 20 to 25 FWO personnel in three vehicles came to the KESC office and after intimidating the security guards posted there, grabbed one of the KESC officers, Mr Nishat, and forced them to go along with them to fix the fault. At the same time, some of the FWO men started beating up another officer, Mr Rashid Azeem, and some other beat up Waris Khan, Javed Akhtar, Umar Daraz and Iqbal who were also present in the office.”

The complainant stated that Javed Akhtar suffered head injuries and was admitted to a private hospital. Staffers of the other KESC departments were witness to the whole episode, he added, identifying some of the FWO men as Hawaldar Khalid Mehmood, Naik Rab Nawaz, Lance Naik Mohammad Zafar and Ghulam Hussain.