OKARA, July 23: Okara police on Friday booked around 100 tenants of Chak 15/4-L and arrested 16 of them under 16-MPO after skirmishes with the police on the premises of a local court.

All the arrested tenants were shifted to the Gogera police station lock-up, some 20kms from here on the Okara-Faisalabad Road.

DSP Headquarters Ikramullah Khan Niazi said that on the orders of the Punjab Home Secretary the police had also arrested Muhammad Altaf, Master Ghulam Rasool and Gulzar under 3-MPO, who appeared in the court on Friday.

Over hundred tenants, including women and children, had come along with the three tenants, who appeared in the court of sessions judge Chaudhry Zafar Hussain. The judge directed the police not to arrest them till July 25. In the meanwhile, the tenants shouted slogans against the government and army.

The policemen present there asked the tenants to leave the court premises. The tenants scuffled with the police when the latter forcibly tried to drive them out of the court premises. The police also resorted to baton-charge and arrested around a dozen women who were released after some time.

Later, the Okara Sadar police booked some 100 tenants and arrested 16 of them. Those arrested were identified as Haji Muhammad Latif, Muhammad Altaf, Muhammad Mukhtar, Muhammad Bashir, Ghulam Mustafa, Muhammad Jafar, Mazhar Iqbal, Muhammad Ashfaq, Muhammad Arif, Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad Sabir, Saifullah, Abdul Waheed, Muhammad Siddique, Muhammad Ijaz and Muhammad Tariq.

After the incident, the Anjuman-i-Mazareen Punjab held an emergency meeting at Chak 4/4-L. The meeting condemned the arrest of 'innocent' tenants and registration of false cases against them.

The participants threatened to block the GT Road if the arrested tenants were not released and cases registered against them and other tenants were not withdrawn immediately. Later, they tried to block the GT Road, but the heavy deployment of police force failed their attempt.

An AMP spokesman and union council Nazim Noor Nabi claimed that the police had also arrested two women, Zohran Bibi and Anwar Bibi, under 3-MPO while Irshad Bibi was also under police custody.

Meanwhile, Labour Part Pakistan secretary-general Farooq Tariq told newsmen in Lahore that the Okara police had arrested 43 tenants of the military farms after beating them up when they came to attend a court.

He said out of the total arrested, 22 were men and the rest were women. However, he said the police released 18 women. He said the police even arrested three tenants who were given protection by the court.

The Labour Party, he said, condemned the highhandedness of the government and believed that all was being done to pressurize the hapless tenants to vacate the lands. He also announced holding of a demonstration in front of the Lahore Press Club on Saturday (today) to protest against the arrests.