EVEN before the volley of gunfire shattered the peace of the night between Oct 12 and 13, a sense of foreboding had gripped the sleepy town of Muridke as residents observed the buildup of law enforcers in its streets. A day earlier, hundreds of TLP supporters had arrived in town but could not move forward due to trenches along the main roads. Unwilling to turn back, the protesters had set up camp for the night on GT Road, intending to strategise on the next move in the morning. Before dawn, however, all hell broke loose.

“We saw for the first time over 3,000 personnel of the FC and the Pakistan (Punjab) Rangers in the streets of Muridke on October 13,” a local trader, who runs a grocery shop in Malkan Wala Bazaar, told Dawn. The trader, A*, lives with his five-member family in an adjoining street of the same bazaar and witnessed the entire saga unfold firsthand.

“Muridke city is home to three major bazaars...and this is where the TLP protesters and police forces clashed early on October 13,” he reminisced.

At around 3:30am, he said, it started with what sounded like small explosions as police fired tear gas shells, followed by the sound of heavy gunfire. “All my family members were terrified,” recounted A*. “We switched off all the lights in the house and kept listening to the cries outside the house,” he added.

Residents and police confirm use of firearms during crackdown

A pitched battle

According to senior police officials and representatives of Muridke’s traders’ union, over 10,000 personnel of law enforcement agencies participated in the large-scale ‘cordon-and-search operation’. The law enforcers had mapped out all the streets and neighbourhoods near the protest camp through surveillance drones. The forces were then split up and deployed at the identified points with the aim of launching an operation from all four sides. In previous encounters with the police, workers of the religio-political outfit have used smaller streets and bazaars as hideouts to regroup and launch counter-attacks on law enforcers.

A few minutes before the operation officially commenced, the law enforcers gave a final warning to the protesters to surrender themselves. The TLP leadership, however, ignored the warning and responded with threats of “a befitting response”.

Seeing the police personnel advancing towards the camp, the protesters who had taken up positions on an overhead pedestrian bridge pelted them with stones. In response, the police fired teargas at the crowd in a bid to disperse them, which led to scuffles between the two sides.

According to a senior police officer, who was leading one of the units in the operation, the majority of protesters at the time had gone to nearby mosques and the homes of local supporters to rest, leaving around 1,500-2,000 of them at the protest camp on GT Road. As the law enforcers moved closer towards the camp, the TLP leaders asked their workers to make announcements in the local mosques about the imminent police operation and to urge them to return to the camp immediately.

Soon after, a mob attacked the police. Amid the scuffle, a heavy trailer, which had been part of the TLP convoy, drove into an APC. At this point, senior officials were informed that several protesters had dragged a police inspector and beaten him black and blue; he later succumbed to his injuries.

According to police officials who spoke to Dawn, they were shocked to see that several TLP protesters started firing at the police convoy. A senior police officer said the firing from the protest camp continued for several minutes, leaving the law enforcers stunned as they had not expected the TLP workers to be armed.

At this point, the police command decided to act swiftly.

According to residents who spoke to Dawn, the police personnel retaliated against the TLP protesters and returned fire, which continued sporadically for over three hours. The residents said that the gunshots echoed through the streets as the bullets ricocheted off buildings and structures, shattering windows and doors in some instances.

When the operation finally ended at around 7:30am, the police made several announcements on loudspeakers, instructing residents to stay inside. When they were finally allowed to leave several hours later, they found thousands of cartridges and bullet casings strewn on the roads and streets, besides bloodstains at the protest camp.

A Muridke-based trader, who asked not to be named, told Dawn that when he reached the venue in the morning, the air hung heavy with the acrid smell of smoke and gunpowder. The road was littered with wreckage, including several vehicles that had been burned beyond recognition. Surprisingly, he said, he found no trace of any TLP worker, nor anyone who may have been injured or died in the four-hour-long skirmish with the police.

Amid ambiguity on the number of deaths, Muridke has slowly crawled back to normalcy, but its residents are still in disbelief over what transpired here on that fateful night.

** Names held back
A full version of the story can be accessed at Dawn.com*

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2025