SUKKUR/MULTAN, May 2: At the intervention of the Deputy Speaker of Punjab Assembly, Mr Shoukat Mazari, the Rajanpur police handed over to relatives the bodies of nine Mazari tribesmen who had been killed on Saturday in an exchange of fire between police and villagers in Bela Shah katcha area under the Bangla Achha police station near Sadiqabad.

Police had buried all the bodies saying nobody had come to claim them. However, people of the Mazari tribe said they had requested police to hand over the bodies.

Deputy Speaker Shoukat Mazari directed the district administration of Rajanpur to initiate an inquiry into the matter and record statements of police officials, villagers and eyewitnesses.

Some villagers told newsmen that they would meet on Monday to work out their plan against police who, they alleged, had brutally killed the innocent people. When this correspondent contacted SP Rajanpur Shahid Iqbal, he said that an inquiry had been ordered into the matter. He assured that the inquiry would be conducted independently and the guilty would be taken to task.

According to him, when the police party entered the villages of the Mazari tribes, all the policemen were made hostages. He said that a fresh contingent was sent to the area, otherwise the villagers would have killed all the police personnel. He denied that police had opened fire first. He said police fired in retaliation after the villagers had fired on them.

He said that nine people, and not 25 as alleged, had been arrested and sophisticated weapons had been found in their possession. The villagers, however, claimed that the police party had come to the village looking for some absconding criminals.

They said that more than 50 police personnel entered their village and when they were told there were no criminals there they set ablaze several houses and opened indiscriminate firing, in which the nine villagers were killed. "We opened fire only in self-defence in which some policemen were killed".

They said that police had taken away bodies of the villagers they had killed and "despite our requests they refuse to hand over their bodies". Thirteen people, including an SHO and two policemen and nine villagers, were killed in the exchange of firing between the villagers and police. Police claimed villagers killed in the encounter were outlaws and were wanted in several cases.