HYDERABAD, Aug 6: Poet Parwano Bhatti, whose son Gul Mohammad Bhatti was recently killed, has accused police of protecting the murder accused. He was speaking at a news conference at the Hyderabad Press Club here on Friday.

He regretted that even after the passage of 10 days police had not cared to record statements of people affected by the murder and said that the attitude of police demonstrated that they were protecting the murderers.

Mr Bhatti said that the accused had been declared absconders but strangely enough their statements were being published in newspapers. He recalled that a murderous attack was made on the life of his son and his friend Saleem Channa at the gate of the Abdullah Centre in Qasimabad on July 28 in which his son was killed and Channa seriously injured.

He alleged that Dr Mazhar Memon, Jan Mohammad Junejo and an unidentified person were directly involved in the murder. He said the root cause of the murder was a woman Haseena Shaikh and her two daughters who held song and dance functions.

He alleged that the women had been provided shelter by the friends of Dr Memon and officials close to him. He wondered what Dr Memon was doing in the Abdullah Centre on the night of July 28 when he had vacated the flat two days earlier.

He demanded that the killers of his son, whose whereabouts were known to police according to him, should be arrested without a further delay. He also urged the authorities to ensure that the nominated accused in the murder case - Dr Memon, Junejo, Haseena and her two daughters - did not leave the country.

ADMISSION TEST: The registrar, University of Sindh, announced here on Friday that pre-entry test for admission in HSC-I pre-engineering and pre-medical groups (morning/ evening) in the Dr N. A. Baloch Model School would be conducted on Aug 7.