RAWALPINDI: A day after local leaders of the ruling party and government officials held walks and seminars to observe the anti-dengue day, the police booked the chairman and vice-chairman of UC-7 and four other people on the charge of attacking an anti-dengue team on Sunday.

“The attackers thrashed me and tore my shirt. They deprived me of Rs2,000 and the CNIC and dragged me into Raja Fayyaz’s drawing room where I was detained for more than an hour and later forced into a patch-up,” Mohammad Bilal, the sanitary inspector of the health department, Rawal Town, stated in an FIR registered with the Pirwadhai police.

He said he along with Amir Mehmood, Arif Masih, Malik Idris and others was on a routine visit of the Pirwadhai area during the ongoing anti-dengue campaign.

He said during the inspection of a milk shop and a barber shop, the team members observed dengue virus and collected samples from the water tank of the building.

As the team was preserving the water samples and taking photographs, the owners of the two shops along with seven to eight other people gathered there and started quarrelling with the team members.

He said the attackers snatched the virus samples from the team.

He alleged that one of the attackers, Tashkeen Haider, the chairman UC-7, snatched a mobile phone from Hamid Mehmood.

The complainant said he was deprived of Rs2,000, his CNIC and a driving licence by the attackers.

Mr Bilal alleged that he was detained in the drawing room of Raja Fayyaz, the vice-chairman UC-7, for an hour. However, he managed to get himself freed after an hour.

The police have registered a case against the alleged attackers but so far none of the accused has been arrested.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2016