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GUJRANWALA, Sept 20: Over 75 people, including minor boys and girls, sustained burn injuries during display of fireworks in and around the city on Monday night. Reports said scores of children threw crackers in houses, streets, bazaars and on passers-by women while some fireworks exploded in their hands as a result of which 75 people received burn injuries and were rushed to hospitals.
Meanwhile, the police also arrested many shopkeepers on charges of selling fireworks and released them after seizing explosives from their possession.
ARRESTED: The district police on Tuesday claimed to have arrested 19 members of five gangs of robbers and recovered goods worth Rs5 million and illicit arms from their possession during a one-week special drive.
This was said by District Police Officer Dr Arif Mushtaq at a briefing here on Tuesday.
bricklining: A sum of Rs80 million will be spent on bricklining of 190 water courses in the district during the current fiscal year, besides provision of imported land levellers to farmers.
This was stated by water management district coordinator Syed Muhammad Zakaria while speaking at a meeting held here on Tuesday.
He said as many as 90 water courses had already been bricklined at a cost of Rs50 million, including Rs10 million paid by the landlords for the purpose.
He said the government had imported agricultural land levelling machines while the same were being manufactured in the country with an expenditure of Rs320,000.
He said as many as 22 machines would be provided to landlords during the current year for land levelling which would help prevent wastage of water.
Divisional canal officer Chaudhry Abdul Rashid told the participants that the irrigation raiding teams caught 600 landlords red-handed while stealing water in the district during the last few months and the police had registered cases in this regard.
DEATH AWARDED: A local court handed down death sentence along with a fine of Rs50,000 to one Shafiq of Satellite Town in a double murder case here on Tuesday.
However, the court acquitted co-accused Muhammad Hasan by giving him the benefit of the doubt.
According to the prosecution, Shafiq had killed his sister ‘R’ and her lover Khadim Husain over illicit relations last year.
DCO orders: The district administration has taken a serious notice of overloading and overcharging by the public transport and directed the Regional Transport Authority secretary and the traffic DSP to check the violations.
At a meeting here on Tuesday, DCO Khalid Masood Chaudhry asked the police to deploy officials in civvies at the lorry adda and arrest the drivers and conductors for violations.
Besides, he stressed that the bus stand owners should provide better facilities of drinking water, toilets, shades and passenger rooms, otherwise, stern action would be taken against them.
A day earlier, the local commuter association demanded that the government should improve the public transport services and check violations.
It observed that the government and the RTA had given monopoly to the franchized buses after cancelling the permits of wagons and their crew overcharged commuters and humiliated them.
