According to FIR No 73 registered with the Laiser police on June 23, main accused Mian Shahid and his four accomplices thrashed Laiser Union Council kissan councillor Muhammad Rafique because he did not vote for Sumaira in the last election and acted as polling agent for her rival candidate.

Mian Shahid (of Darman village) is a close relative of Sumaira and a nephew of former MPA Mian Muhammad Rasheed. Sumaira is the daughter-in-law of Mian Rasheed.

Rafique, a resident of Hamral village in Shakargarh tehsil, says in his application to the police: “…on June 21... Mian Shahid and his accomplices Shabbir Shah, Accha, Kala and others stopped me at the bus stop…about two hundred metres from my village… Mian Shahid asked his armed men to teach me a lesson for I had voted against Sumaira and acted as polling agent for her rival candidate in the (Feb 18) election.

“They asked me to run, but I refused. Then they hit me with the butts of their rifles until my head and face started bleeding and I fell on to the ground. Then they fired shots in the air, told me that they will kill me if I voted against their candidate in future and left the scene on motorcycles.”

When MNA Sumaira Rasheed was called for her comment on the case on Wednesday, it was her husband Yasir Rasheed who attended the telephone. He said the MNA was away in Narowal and offered an explanation of his own. He said Mian Shahid was a transport owner and that he had a business dispute with the complainant, Rafique.

Muhammad Arif, an official of the Laiser police associated with the case, earlier said the accused had gotten interim bail and that the incident was being investigated. His telephone was switched off when Dawn tried to contact him for an update on the investigation on Wednesday, but Laiser police naib muharrar Khalid Mahmood said the investigation might take a couple of more days to complete.

Victimisation of ‘rival’ voters by the victors is not a new phenomenon in this mostly rural district. Registration of cases is, however, rare. Narowal’s NA-115 constituency has been long plagued by violence. The hunting down of political opponents was rampant here in the 1990s when criminals armed with the most sophisticated weapons preyed on dissenting voters without fear of action by the authorities.