GUJRANWALA, June 12: At least 136 people, including Nazim and Naib, were booked under the terrorist act for blocking the road and looting and ransacking the paper and straw board manufacturing factory at Khiali on Wednesday.
Police also arrested 20 people in a crackdown on their houses and shops at the main Sheikhupura Road. While the rest of them went into hiding for fear of their arrest.
The people were protesting against the presence of the factory in residential area for it is emitting smoke and causing pollution.
Owner Muhammad Rafiq told police that he was present in his factory along with his partners. Meanwhile, assailants including UC No 34 Nazim Babu Imtiaz his brothers Riaz, Ijaz, their nephew Amir Bashir, UC No 36 Naib Nazim Nasir Mahmood, his brothers Saleem, Asif, Iqbal and their relative women Begum Manzoor and Zahida, barged into the factory. They smashed windowpanes and destroyed furniture, main gates, factory motorcycle, pick-up and took away Rs640,000 in cash besides important documents.
They later blocked the main Sheikhupura Road by setting used tyres on fire.
As many as 41 people, including three women, were nominated while 75 men and 20 women were shown unknown in an FIR.
Residents of Khiali and nearby colonies, mostly women, strongly protested against the factory owner for nominating and involving women in the FIR. They also expressed their resentment over torturing of men and women by police after intruding into their houses.
Later, scores of women took out a rally against the factory owner and chanted slogans against him demanding it should be sealed and be shifted from the residential area.
Heavy police contingents reached there and dispersed the protesters. Later, women re-emerged at some other place, but they dispersed when tehsil city council Naib Nazim Ehsanullah reached there and assured them that their grievances would be redressed within two days.
SSP Aslam Tarin however deployed a heavy police contingent outside the factory to avoid any untoward incident.
UPLIFT PROJECTS: The district development committee meeting urged the departments concerned to complete uplift projects within the stipulated period.
The committee also gave an approval for the purchase of furniture and other equipment for 91 schools in the district. The meeting was presided over by district coordinating officer Iftikhar Ahmad Khan while heads and senior officers of the works and services, finance and planning, literacy, education, health, highways building, GDA, Phed and Wasa were also present on the occasion.
Uplift projects were being completed under the Khushhal Pakistan Programme, Annual Development Programme and Social Action Programme in urban and rural areas to provide better facilities to people.
Briefing on the occasion, the EDO (Education) said that tenders for the purchase of schools would be issued within next two days.
CONDEMNED PRISONER: A local court on Wednesday issued black warrants for the condemned prisoner.
Tahir Mahmood of Shadbagh, Lahore, will be hanged on June 19 in jail.
The convict was awarded death sentence by the local sessions court in a murder case on Oct 11, 1994. The High Court and Supreme Court upheld the decision of lower court, while the president also rejected his clemency appeal.