KHAIRPUR, April 1: The first additional sessions judge, Khairpur, on Saturday granted bail to three Pakistan People’s Party leaders, Samiullah Shah Rashidi, Zaman Shah Rashidi and Amjad Shah Jilani against cash surety of Rs100,000.

A large number of PPP workers led by former district nazim Nafisa Shah, Mehboob Shah Rashidi and MPA Naeem Kharal received the released leaders outside the jail, and accompanied them to Pir Jo Goth in procession.

Samiullah, later addressing the procession at Pir Jo Goth, called their arrests politically motivated. He said last year his brother Zaman was arrested after he joined PPP, and now he, his brother and president PPP Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah’s nephew Amjad Shah Jilani were arrested.

The prime minister and the president keep claiming at international forums there was democracy in the country while here arrests on political grounds continued unabated, he said.

He said staging demonstrations to express one’s protest was part and parcel of democratic norms and demolishing people’s properties in the name of clearance of encroachments was no democracy.

Former district nazim Nafisa Shah said the demolition of shops owned by PPP workers was a targeted act.

FOLK ARTISTS: A large number of folk-singers and poets, Sufi singers, musicians, comperes and announcers, who work on-off for Radio Pakistan Khairpur demanded in a meeting on Saturday radio authorities pay them through open cheques so that they could be cashed easily.

The folk artists said they had been unable to cash their cheques for a whole year because, with the meagre amount they had received from radio authorities, they could not open an account in the first place, and could not maintain it should a bank let them open one.