GUJRANWALA, Dec 20: A huge quantity of urea fertiliser was seized on Saturday by a joint raiding party, comprising personnel of the agriculture department and police, from a godown at Ladhaywala Warraich village, allegedly stored for blackmarketing.
The action was taken after complaints that manufacturers and dealers connived to enhance urea prices and were charging Rs900 for a 50kg bag instead of officially-fixed Rs635, while the latter had stored huge quantity of the fertiliser at their godowns.
The joint team headed by District Officer (Agriculture) Liaqat Bhatti on a tip-off raided the secret godown and recovered as many as 700 urea bags from there. However, the owner, dealer Shamim managed to escape.
Following the seizure, the DO ordered sale of the fertiliser to the wheat growers at official price on the spot.
Meanwhile, Ghakkhar Town police arrested two dealers --Altaf and Imtiaz -- on charges of selling urea at inflated prices and registered a case against them.
DIE IN ACCIDENT: Two people died and six others injured in a collision between a bus and a Peter rickshaw on Sheikhupura Road near Muraliwala Village on Saturday.
The bus was on its way to Gujranwala from Noshehra Virkan when it collided head-on with a Peter rickshaw. As a result, two rickshaw passengers, Munir and Irfan, died on the spot while six others — Sohail, Usman, Amreen, Farrah, Shehnaz and Ayesha — sustained injuries.
FISH FARMERS: Representatives of owners of fish farms situated near Qadirabad and Alipur Chattha have demanded the government should announce facilities for them as due to increase in input cost and various other factors their businesses were running in loss.
Fish farmers’ association president Syed Ali Zulqarnain and other office- bearers Haji Irshad Ullah and Anwar Gondal said not only the prices of fish feed, manure, electricity and diesel etc had gone up but the farmland lease rates had also been increased by landlords from Rs10,000 to Rs20,000, resulting in heightened input cost.
They said last year about 50 consignments of fish would be dispatched daily to various cities from the area but this year the figure had come down to eight to 10 consignments, resulting in heavy losses to the farmers.
They said because of the losses many farmers had left the business.
Mr Gondal said if the farmers were provided better facilities they could produce more fish lower rates, supplementing the meat production in the country.
BOOKED: A CIA inspector of the Cantonment police station on Saturday was booked on the orders of the district and sessions judge for detaining a British national.
Kashif Shahzad of Ghakkhar Town, who also possessed the British nationality, was picked up by the CIA staff and detained at the police station.
Heirs of Shahzad moved the court on whose orders a bailiff recovered him from the jail. Judge summoned Inspector Zahoor Shaheen and his staff who told the court that CIA SP Mohsin Naqvi asked them to interrogate Shahzad. However, the SP denied that he had asked his subordinates to interrogate Shahzad.