KHAIRPUR, April 7: Scores of villagers and city dwellers staged two separate demonstrations outside the press club on Saturday against police excesses. A large number of people from the Nawab Khan village staged demonstration carrying lanterns and candles. They told journalists that Thari Mirwah police had been raiding the houses of Khaskheli community time and again since last month.

During such raids they would manhandle and torture women by tying their hands with their scarves (dupatta), they charged.

The villagers said that said that they had a dispute over land with some influential men of area and the police were forcing them to leave their agricultural land.

They said that they had written to the revenue officials asking them to conduct a survey and decide once and for all who owned the land but they their pleas seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.

In another demonstration city dwellers protested against A-section police alleging that the police arrested a Sikandar

Joyo four days ago from Shahi bazaar and subjected him to torture.

They were not even allowing the friends and relatives to meet him, they said.

KILLED: A man axed his estranged wife to death on Friday evening suspecting her of having illicit relations with someone else.