RAWALPINDI: The local chapter of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Monday said the Sunday night clash between two groups of its workers was caused by a personal dispute, adding the party activists have no political differences.

“A dispute over property led to the armed clash between the two groups of activists and this had nothing to do with the party matters,” former PTI Punjab vice-president Raja Tariq Kiyani told Dawn. He said the party had completed an initial inquiry into the incident and found that there was no political rift among the workers.

He said there were some differences among the local leaders but they were not serious. He said the workers had been advised not to use their political association in their personal disputes.

PTI NA-56 convener Fayazul Hasan Chohan also denied any differences among the party workers and said the Sunday incident occurred over a personal dispute.

“The provincial government is using the police to turn the personal dispute into a political issue to give a bad name to the PTI.”

He said during the last one week activists of other parties had joined the PTI.

In NA-56, the constituency from where Imran Khan was elected in the 2013 elections, key activists and former nazims belonging to the PPP, PML-N and Jamaat-i-Islami joined the PTI, he added.

Those who joined the PTI included PPP’s naib nazim from Union Council 24 (Dhoke Ali Akbar) Masood Shah, PML-N’s former nazim Malik Shafique from Union Council 18 (Pindora) and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI)’s Hafiz Zahid from Union Council 20, he added.

Fayazul Hasan Chohan told Dawn that the PTI had started reorganising the party in the garrison city and during the last about one week mostly workers of other parties joined the PTI.

He said the local chapter of the PTI had been given the task to improve the party organisation before the local government elections.

PTI MPA and former district president Arif Abbasi, who belonged to the MPA group and had differences over the current set-up of the organisers, also said the clash between the two groups was not political.

Meanwhile, the police gave a twist to the Sunday night clash between the two groups of the PTI by not mentioning the political affiliation of any of the suspects identified in the FIR registered against over 160 people under the anti-terrorism act.

“It is not in the knowledge of the police whether the suspects identified in the FIR are to be arrested or not,” Sub-Inspector Inayat Ali of the Sadiqabad police, who is leading the investigation into the case, told Dawn.

Initially, the police had claimed that two groups of the PTI clashed with each other in the Sadiqabad locality of the garrison city while celebrating the election tribunal’s verdict de-seating National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq.

Among the injured were a woman and her son who were being treated at the Benazir Bhutto Hospital for bullet injuries.

Inspector Allah Yar Khan of the Sadiqabad police, the complainant in the FIR, stated that he was on a night patrolling when he heard the sound of gunshots.

“People started running for cover while shopkeepers pulled down their shutters to escape the gunshots.” The inspector said as he reached the spot he found Barat Khan and Najeebullah carrying pistols, Syed Iftikhar Shah with a baton and four other people armed with pistols along with 100 to 150 unidentified people quarreling with each other.

“Some of the people quarreling with each other were firing gunshots which left Ehshtam Bhatti and his mother Nargis Bibi injured,” he stated in the FIR. As many as 14 people were nominated in the FIR.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2015

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