GUJRANWALA, April 30: A man gagged his wife and three daughters to death in a fit of frustration over poverty at Falewala village. Reports said Ehsan Ullah, a mechanic of harvester machines, was facing abject poverty, while his wife would quarrel with him over house expenditures.

On Saturday, when his wife Tanzila, 35, and daughters Aneela, 6, Kanait, 4, and three-month-old Kiran were sleeping in the house, he gagged them to death one by one and escaped. Ahmad Nagar police have registered a case against the accused on the report of Talib Hussain, brother of Tanzila, and are investigating.

PROBE ORDERED: District and Sessions Judge Javed Ahmad Siddiqi ordered judicial inquiry into an encounter in which an arrested accused and two police constables were killed in district courts about a week ago.

Judicial Magistrate Malik Shabir Ahmad has been appointed inquiry officer.

Reports said that an accused, Amir Yaqoob, and two constables Abdul Ghafoor and Shafiq were killed, while three criminals — Naeem, Javed and Raheel— escaped from the court premises in handcuffs, when police brought them to produce before a court for hearing of a murder case.

The probe will begin from May 11.

New passports: The provision of machine-readable passports began at the local office on Saturday.

This was stated by passport office assistant director Muhammad Ashraf Khan after inaugurating the service.

He said a new building had been rented for this purpose on the Sialkot Road. All new MRPs would be provided at the new office where the passport cell in-charge would provide information to people, he said.

UTILITY STORES: Utility stores’ regional and district offices will be restored shortly for which arrangements are being finalized, according to the utility stores corporation managing-director, Brig Hafiz Ahmad (retired).

At a briefing here on Saturday, he said utility stores were being restored in Sialkot, Shakargarh, Pasrur, Daska and Hafizabad. He claimed the stores in Gujrat and Gujranwala had earned enough to help the corporation overcome its deficit.

He said there were 78 utility stores in the Gujranwala division and most of them were closed because of loss.