LAHORE, Aug 30: The chairman of the Anjuman-i-Mazareen, Punjab, Anwar Javed Dogar, is in the police custody, the Okara police chief told the Lahore High Court on Friday.

Arrested in Okara on Aug 24, the leader of the tenants was currently in the Sahiwal jail, the SP informed Justice Mian Najamuz Zaman.

Mr Dogar was among seven people reported to be missing since the Aug 24 action by the rangers and police against Okara military farm tenants who are struggling for ownership rights. The rangers and police had so far kept silent about their whereabouts.

The judge directed the SP to produce Mr Dogar in a court in Okara on Sept 4.

The SP appeared in the court in response to a notice issued on a petition filed by Mr Dogar’s wife Shaheen Dogar for the recovery of her husband.

In her petition she said that she and her husband had reached Okara on Aug 24 where clashes between the tenants and the police were taking place. “We went to the clinic of Dr Sabir Shaheen from where the police picked up my husband,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Okara police produced 11 tenants in an anti- terrorism court here on Friday. They were reportedly arrested during and after the last week operation at different pickets around the military farm villages.

A Saddar police official from Okara, accompanying the arrested tenants, also brought with him stones alleged to have been thrown at the police by the tenants. The court sent the accused to the Sahiwal jail on judicial remand.