KHAIRPUR, Jan 22: Former Khairpur district nazim Nafisa Shah has said that a judicial inquiry should be conducted into the lodging of false cases in Khairpur district after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and demanded release of teenagers who had been implicated in false cases.

She was at the hearing of PPP workers who were on interim pre-arrest bail and had come to attend the hearing of their cases at the anti-terrorism court on Tuesday.

Ms Nafisa Shah was accompanied by a lawyers’ delegation who also met PPP workers.

Talking to reporters, she said registration of false cases against PPP workers, their arrest and harassment was the biggest political victimisation in the history of the country. She condemned torture against PPP workers, including women, in rural areas of Bhango Behan, Kotdiji and Noorpur taluka Sobhodero.

She said that police were not registering PPP workers’ cases, whereas feudal lords of the area were issuing threats to them and pressurising to stop election work for PPP candidates.

She claimed that twenty-seven PPP workers implicated in false cases have been imprisoned in the central jail in Khairpur.

A lawyers’ delegation led by People’s Lawyers Forum’s Sukkur region’s president, Liaquat Shar, Ms Khursheed Abbas Dasti and others had conducted a survey about those who had been implicated in false cases and were jailed.

They told reporters that ten of the arrested people were teenagers including Nasir Ali Shaikh, Imran Ali Shaikh, Asif Ali Qureshi, Ali Raza Maitlo, Gul Mir Jatt, Waqar Memon, Mujahid Mari, Riaz Shaikh and two others.