HYDERABAD, July 25: Police on Sunday used tear gas shells to disperse a group of people who were resisting anti-encroachment drive by officials of the Taluka Municipal Administration.

The protesters pelted vehicles of the TMA and officials with stones when they started removing encroachment in a graveyard. As men and women threw stones, the police resorted to tear gas shelling to disperse the crowd.

The police also picked up more than half a dozen protesters for creating a law and order situation. However, the B-section police station said no formal FIR was lodged against anyone and those detained had been released.

The police said the matter was being settled out of police station. A controversy was going-on between the TMA Latifabad and the builder of "Bismillah City" housing project over the removal of encroachments raised by members of Oad and Bagri minority communities in the graveyard.

The encroachers were earlier sitting on what the builder claimed on his piece of land where the commercial plaza was being launched. The builder had paid them money to get his land vacated and settled them in the graveyard which was to be looked after by the TMA Latifabad.

Latifabad nazim told newsmen they had asked the builder to get graveyard land vacated from the possession of encroachers because it was due to him that the land had been occupied. The commercial plaza had been launched on the land owned by Chaudhry Ashraf.

The nazim said different organizations including religious parties had been building pressure on him to remove encroachment from the graveyard. The builder maintained he possessed all legal documents of the commercial scheme and it was not his headache which piece of land the encroachers occupied now.

SHC: The Sindh High Court, Hyderabad circuit bench, has returned an appeal to the additional district judge for Sanghar in Nawabshah, asking him to again hear it and an election petition against the Tando Adam taluka nazim and naib nazim.