HYDERABAD, Jan 4: The Pakistan People’s Party candidate for PS-85 Thatta, Sassui Palejo, has said that countless FIRs had been lodged in her district in order to bar PPP activists from participating in election activities.

She alleged that the PPP activists were being held in private places of the Shirazis instead of police stations or jails.

Addressing a press conference in Qasimabad on Friday, she described the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as murder of humanity and expressed regrets over losses suffered by people as a result of violence.

She said that FIRs had been lodged against PPP candidates and workers whereas countless number of unidentified people had been declared as the accused so that police could harass their workers.

“Registration of cases on such a massive scale has no parallel,” she said.

Ms Palejo said that not only the state but the workers of the PML, PML-F and MQM were complainants in such cases to target their party workers.

She disputed the claim of DIG Hyderabad range that 81,000 people were booked in 169 cases in the interior of Sindh.

In fact, she said, hundreds of thousands of people were booked in such cases and even she had not been spared in cases of arson. “I have been booked in cases of torching a train in Thatta because I live in a village of Jung Shahi (where a railway station is located). Does that mean I burnt these train coaches?”

She said the spontaneous and natural reaction of PPP workers against the murder was comprehensible. The workers must have had restricted themselves to lighting bonfires alone, she conceded.