THATTA, Dec 17: People from various villages located along Nai Ranpatiani (a seasonal natural water channel) and Jung Shahi have lodged a strong complain against armed henchmen of a former DIG of Sindh police and sought protection from President Pervez Musharraf.

Mudassar, Mohammad Anwar, Abdul Aziz and others of Alko Jokhio, Sanjar Halani and Kheanro Jokhio villages of Deh 7/4 Kohistan, Thatta district, have complained that henchmen of former DIG Mumtaz Burney, on the instigation of an influential man, Usman Pathan, had made their lives miserable.The villagers said that those people, often brandishing sophisticated weapons, resorted to indiscriminate aerial firing to harass the villagers and to keep them off their fields. Those people were now even constructing huts on the Qabooli lands of the villagers, they added.

They claimed that recently armed men identified as Usman Pathan, Mohammad Shamim and Saeed Khan Khalid stormed Imam Bux Jokhio village, blind-folded and tied three villagers, tortured and drove them away in a vehicle. Later, they were found injured near a desolated place in the vicinity of Gulshan-i-Hadeed in Karachi.

The Makli police, the villagers said, reluctantly registered an FIR of the incident on Dec 3, but no arrest had so far been made.

They claimed that those men were running illegal Reti Bajri (sand and gravel) business in the area and their heavy machinery had rendered barren the small land holdings which were the only sources of earning for the local people. The influential dikka (excavation site) operators and the armed thugs of the former DIG had made their lives miserable.