PESHAWAR, Jan 24: Villagers of the Badhber area on Monday attacked a police post and damaged vehicles during a protest demonstration against load shedding by the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco).

Sources told Dawn that residents of Sheikh Mohammadi, Saifan, Mashukhel and Sheikhan villages staged a demonstration on the Kohat Road in the Badhber area at 11.30am and blocked it for two hours for all kinds of vehicular traffic.

The villagers said they had been protesting for two days against the long hours, unannounced load shedding being carried out by Pesco but nothing had been done to improve the situation.

The protesters wanted to march to the Pesco office in Badhber but the police stopped them from moving forward. The angry villagers diverted their frustration to the Saifan police post and damaged its boundary walls.

They also damaged the vehicles of DSP rural Imran Shahid, a police van and a motorbike at the police post, witnesses said. The protesters dispersed after the area nazim and councillors assured them that they would talk to the Pesco officials to resolve the problem.

Later, a Pesco spokesman denied that any load shedding was being carried out in the Badhber area. The spokesman, Shaukat Afzal, told Dawn that due to illegal connections, the grid station had become overloaded and caused the circuit breaker to trip which stopped the power supply.

Since gas had not been provided to villages in the Badhber area, people used electricity for different purposes by acquiring illegal kunda connections, he alleged. Owing to the extra load on the grid station, it stopped working and disconnect power supply to villages, he added.