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ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The Pakistan People’s Party has demanded a judicial probe into the killing last week of the tenants of Okara military farms by the Rangers and to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice.
In a statement issued here on Thursday, a spokesman of the party said the “planned killing of three farmers” of army occupied farms by the Rangers was a very serious matter, which would not be allowed to die down in the din of elections.
“It appears that the killings were planned and deliberate to silence the growing protests against the allotment of state lands to army generals and forcibly evicting tenants who have been tilling the lands for generations,” the statement said.
Keeping in view the fact that the government had publicly announced to give ownership rights to the tenants, the spokesman said, it was inescapable to draw the conclusion that the killings were planned by those who had vested interests in the state lands allotted to army officers.
The web-based South Asia Tribune last week published a list of 62 senior army officers who had been allotted such lands.
MASIH’S DEATH: The PPP also demanded a separate judicial probe into the circumstances of the killing of 19-year-old youth Salman Masih, a matric student, and the refusal of the authorities to carry out any postmortem despite demands by the family, the statement said.
The PPP spokesman said Salman Masih was killed at 6pm on Saturday but his body was not handed over to his family till Monday morning. The family of Salman had refused to bury the dead until the FIR was registered and the postmortem carried out but their demand was not accepted.
Press reports said under pressure from the Rangers, the family finally buried him, without the postmortem, on Tuesday. The reports said the authorities handed over the body in a coffin, forbidding the family from opening the box. But the family did open it, and said the body was tortured black and blue.
TENSION: Tension is running high in the area as the police have registered murder case against some residents of the military farms.
The spokesman recalled that the notorious Tando Bahawal incident in 1992 in which the authorities continued to insist that there was no foul play in the murder of nine villagers, initially dubbed as Indian agents, till the independent press exposed the whole truth.
It was only then, and after much hesitation and foot dragging, that a criminal case was registered in the Tando Bahawal killings. “Who knows the killing of Salman Masih may have a ring of Tando Bahawal which can be exposed only by a judicial probe,” the spokesman added.
The PPP urged the human rights bodies and members of civil society to raise their voice against the brutal killings and force the authorities to register FIR and order a judicial probe. —PPI
