Five Punjabi workers killed, one escapes

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Balochistan law-and-order: Five Punjabi workers killed, one escapes




By Owais Jaffery

Published: December 4, 2011
MULTAN:
Bodies of five workers, three of them daily-wagers from Kabirwala who were hired by a transporter to load coal on a truck from mines in Balochistan, arrived here on Friday night and were sent to their houses for burial.

One of the four people hired for loading coal on the truck, Hasan, a resident of a Mari Sahu village, had managed to escape.

The fourth deceased, 18-year-old Amir, was a resident of Khangarh, Muzaffargarh, and had been employed as a dispenser at a health unit in Sibbi. The deceased were identified as: truck driver Abdur Rehman and Ghulam Hussain of Kabirwala, Sanaullah of Qasba Gujrat and Ghulam Tareen of Kot Addu.

Hasan told The Express Tribune that the truck carrying the four workers and the health department official was hijacked near Shahruq, Sibbi, on Tuesday night, while it was on its way to Kabirwala. Hasan said he had fled on Thursday and reached Kabirwala on Friday.

He said the kidnappers were holding several other people at the camp where they had taken him and his colleagues. Most of those held at the camp belonged to the Punjab and had been working at coal mines in Sibbi for a daily wage of Rs300, he added. He said some were killed and their bodies burnt in front of them because their relatives had not contacted the kidnappers or not agreed to a ransom payment. He said the truck they were riding was burnt and they were taken to the camp blindfolded in another vehicle.

Relatives of the deceased staged a demonstration in Multan and blocked National Highway by placing the bodies on the road.

The protesters left for their villages after Kabirwala City SHO Mahar Zafar assured them that the matter would be taken up with the Balochistan police very soon. The SHO told the Tribune that the standard procedure in such cases was for the police station concerned to send the complainant’s application to the inspector general of Punjab police through the offices of the City Police Officer and the Regional Police Officer.

The IGP, he said, would then contact his counterpart in Balochistan.

Kabirwala Goods Transporters Association chairman Rana Javed Iqbal protested against the incident and threatened that goods transport to and from Balochistan would be suspended if appropriate measures were not taken to improve the law and order situation in the province.

As many as 12 people from the Punjab, most of them daily-wage workers, have so far been killed in several incidents in Balochistan this year.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4th, 2011.