GUJRANWALA, Aug 2: A local student organization and a seminary administration condemned on Monday deportation of 51 Afghan students by police and threatened to launch countrywide protest movement against the government if police continued raids.
Jamiat Tulaba Arabia Nazim Maulana Ishaq Hazarvi said police had raided twice at the Jamia Muhammadia Arabia on the GT Road and deported 51 Afghan students in the last two days.
He alleged that the government had taken the action at the behest of the US to eliminate seminaries from the country. Seminary Nazim Hafeezur Rahman said around 200 students at his seminary were upset over the police action.
Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal MNA Maulana Qazi Hamidullah also criticized the police action against madressahs and pledged to table a privilege motion in the National Assembly in this regard.
He said the students, who were expelled from the seminary, were not Afghans, but they belonged to tribal areas. Meanwhile, the police continued to collect information about students of seminaries across the district.
BREACH: At least a dozen villages of Wahando area were flooded due to a breach occurred in Nullah Dek here on Sunday night. Reports said the nullah was overflowing owing to heavy rains, causing the breach near Wahando area.
Water flowed to the houses at Nangel Dona Singh, Shamir, Dholan, Mirzapur, Jakian, Manjpur, Lalupur and other adjacent villages following damaging standing crops of paddy and fodder. Relief teams reached the spot and plugged the breach with the help of the local people. However, no human loss was reported.
HOSPITALS: Three more social security hospitals would be constructed for provision of better facilities to industrial workers and their children. This was stated by Punjab social security commissioner Naveed Akram Cheema during visit to a hospital here on Monday.
He said the hospitals would be constructed at Gujrat, Sialkot and Shahdara (Lahore). Mr Cheema said automatic Ultrasound and X-rays machines had been installed at the city social security hospital while patients were being provided with better health facilities.
DACOITS HIT: Dacoits on Monday looted the owner of a medicine company, house of an industrialist and took away a motorcycle in three strikes in and around the city.
Reports said Wasim Khokhar was on his way home following recovery by his motorcycle. Near the fly-over on the Sialkot Road, two motorcyclists intercepted him and snatched a cash of Rs650,000 from him at gunpoint.
Seven outlaws forced their entry into the house of Muhammad Sharif by scaling the boundary wall on the Hafizabad Road. They held hostage the inmates and made off with jewellery and Rs200,000. Imran of Sheikhupura Road was deprived of his motorcycle by two robbers when he was on his way home from market.