LAHORE, Nov 8: With the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) determined to hold a rally in Rawalpindi on Friday, a crackdown on its activists, launched on Wednesday, continued unabated.

According to the PPP, the number of arrests made in Punjab has crossed the 1,500 mark.

PPP Punjab president Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that hundreds of activists had been picked up from their homes. He alleged that police misbehaved with women when they could not find the persons they wanted.

Authorities in Punjab, however, said that 800 activists belonging to various opposition parties had been detained till Thursday evening.

Officials in the provincial home department said that more detentions were likely.

They said that on Wednesday activists of the PML-N, Jamaat-i-Islami and Tehrik-i-Insaaf had been detained. But now police and other law-enforcement agencies have also started apprehending PPP workers.

Police arrested 57 political workers, including a PPP MPA from Faisalabad, 125 from Gujranwala, 96 from Sialkot, 50 from Mandi Bahauddin, 14 each from Toba Tek Singh, Bahawalpur and Layyah, and 10 from Jhang.