KARACHI, April 19: Alleging that a conspiracy is being hatched to stop the party from taking part in the general elections, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement on Friday made it clear that it will not boycott the general elections come what may.

Speaking at a press conference held at the MQM headquarters, senior MQM leader Dr Farooq Sattar said that frequent killings of party workers and supporters, siege and search operations of ‘peaceful Mohajir localities’ by the police and Rangers and arrest and torture of innocent people were part of a conspiracy to force the MQM to boycott the general elections.

He said that four MQM sympathisers — Shakil Ahmed, his cousins Abdul Khaliq and Naveed Ahmed and a rickshaw driver Nadeem Bahadur — were kidnapped, tortured and killed by armed terrorists, who threw their bodies in Shershah and Mewashah graveyard on Friday.

He said that the four slain men attended the inauguration ceremony of the central election office of the MQM for NA-249 on Thursday.

He said that the killing of MQM office-bearers, workers and supporters by armed terrorists had become a routine feature in the city. “The political and religious parties of Pakistan are busy in their election campaigns and the MQM is busy in burying its leaders, workers and sympathisers.”

Dr Sattar said that the killing of MQM’s election candidates and workers were a part of a conspiracy to force the MQM to boycott the elections and to snatch the mandate from Mohajirs. “We want to make it clear that the MQM will never leave its constitutional, legal and democratic right and not boycott the elections come what may.”

He said that on one hand innocent workers of the MQM were being arrested and subjected to torture at ‘government torture cells’, on the other hand no action was taken against terrorists and their hideouts in Lyari.

“It seems that the workers of the MQM have been left at the mercy of armed terrorists and despite assurances of President Asif Ali Zardari, the caretaker government and the election commission of Pakistan, the killing of MQM workers remains continued in the city,” he added.

He said that the people of Karachi and families of those killed asked the MQM as to when the government would take action against killers and terrorists.

He called upon President Zardari, caretaker Prime Minister Hazar Khan Khoso, Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary and others to take notice of the killing of MQM workers, arrest the killers and award them severe punishment.

He asked the authorities to take steps to foil the conspiracy to snatch the mandate of the MQM.