KARACHI, March 15: A large number of people, most of them women, staged a demonstration at Shahnawaz Bhutto Chowk on Manghopir Road on Saturday against attempts by “unscrupulous elements” to grab Gutter Baghicha land, and warned of a long march up to the Governor’s House if effective measures were not taken to protect the site.

They demanded that a park be developed on the entire park site as per the approved plan.

Addressing the demonstrators, leaders of the Gutter Baghicha Bachao Tehrik, which organised the event, accused the Sindh governor and the city nazim of patronising and protecting the land-grabbers, and urged them to stop such practices and take measures to retrieve the already grabbed portions of the amenity plot, as well as other such lands.

The speakers, including Ikram Memon, Farida Baloch, Tahir Sawati and Nisar Baloch, pointed out that the land-grabbers were conspiring to slash a 480-acre piece of the Gutter Baghicha land and convert it into a housing and commercial project.

They reminded the authorities that President Pervez Musharraf had ordered development of the Gutter Baghicha as a national park, and deplored that the land-grabbers who appeared to be influential and well-connected in official quarters were bent upon foiling all attempts to execute the park project. Instead of vacating the already grabbed portions of the site, they were out to grab more and more pieces of the land, worth billions of rupees, they added.