PESHAWAR, June 13: Political and social organizations have denounced recent incidents of molestation of women in Peshawar and Nowshera by holding a protest demonstration at Chowk Yadgar here on Sunday.

The protest was jointly organized by the All Pakistan Women Association and Awami National Party, which has recently launched its women wing. They raised voice against the criminal incidents, wherein some influential people and their cronies had disgraced three innocent women in village Chughalpura of Peshawar and village Koocha Dheri of Nowshera district.

Addressing the demonstrators, ANP provincial chief Begum Nasim Wali Khan held the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) government responsible for the growing incidents of lawlessness in the province. The MMA had failed to protect even the life and property of the people in the NWFP, she observed.

She alleged that the MMA had misused the slogan of Shariat to serve its factional interests and hoodwink the innocent people. Religious coalition leaders, she claimed, had extended their shoulder to the dictators who were running the country, Mrs Wali Khan added.

She said the MMA government had confined itself to tearing down billboards carrying images of women, but had forgot the rights of womenfolk being victimised in the name the centuries-old wrong practices.

The MMA government was carrying out someone else's agenda in the name of Islam, though they were aware of their failure in delivering any good to the masses, she said.

The government had installed a friendly opposition in the National assembly to give a final blow to the political and democratic forces in the country, she added. Frontier province Apwa head Begum Zari Sarfaraz Khan hit hard at the so-called jirga which had provided relief to the culprits instead of the victim by giving unjust verdict in Koocha Dheri case.

She said the jirga had asked the culprits to pay Rs 1,000,000 to the girl paraded in street of Koocha Dheri. And when her family refused to accept it, the jirga exonerated the five culprits involved in the incident, she said.

She said that in Chughalpura, the culprits took away two sisters on gunpoint to a nearby hujra and gangraped them, but the security and law agencies were providing a relief to the perpetrators instead of the victims.

She demanded that the government should hold a fresh inquiry into these callous incidents and give exemplary punishment to the culprits. After a walk against these incidents, the protesters dispersed peacefully.