Rangers get 90 days to question nine MQM men

Karachi
Nine Muttahida Qaumi Movement workers, said to be involved in terror activities and forced collection of donations, were handed over for questioning to the Sindh Rangers for 90 days by an anti-terrorism court on Friday.
Rangers personnel alleged that the suspects - Zubair Ashraf, Shakir Raza, Hamid Imtiaz, Hassan Abbas, Ismail Muhammad, Shakir Adnan, Nisar, Sanaullah and Fawadul Haque - were involved in offences that fell under the ambit of the Anti-Terrorism Act, as well as forcibly collecting Fitra from areas including Rizvia Society and DHA.
Of the nine suspects, Sanaullah and Fawad were arrested by a special task force of Rangers in DHA for extorting traders under the garb of fitra. The law officer said Sanaullah was the owner of a factory that manufactured CCTV cameras and had been using this technology for criminal activities. After monitoring the activities of traders through CCTV cameras, he called them up and threatened to kill them if they did not pay him money. The ATC-III endorsed the orders to keep the two MQM activists under detention for 90 days.
The rest of the suspects had been picked up by the Rangers a day earlier for forcibly collecting donations in Rizvia Society. According to a statement issued by the paramilitary force, a total of Rs31,500 was recovered from their possession, along with over 1,000 donation receipts.

Waqas Shah’s murder
Another MQM activist, Asif Ali, who faces charges of killing his fellow party worker, Waqas Shah, was remanded in police custody till July 11.
Police informed the court that the murder weapon had been found using the information provided by Ali during interrogation.
The court sent him on physical remand for possessing illegal weapons.
Rangers arrested Ali in Shahdadpur on June 25.

MQM’s appeal
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement has approached human rights organisations with an appeal to raise their voice against what they called “dubious arrests” of its workers and staffers of its welfare organisation, Khidmat-e-Khalq Foundation (KKF).
The Coordination Committee of the party said its workers collected money through Fitra and Zakat and the people of Karachi were well aware of that fact.
Stopping those collecting funds for the needy people was a great injustice, it said, adding that the KKF was working round the clock for the welfare of the people.
The committee appealed to the human rights organisations to raise their voice at the national and international levels against “this discrimination and injustice”.
It said the Rangers were pressurizing the KKF staffers to stop its activities of helping the poor and the destitute. It condemned the arbitrary arrests of its workers and KKF members, terming them a conspiracy against the party and the foundation.
The committee said a large number of party workers had been arrested by the Rangers in the last 24 hours. It added that the arrests of innocent party workers had become the order of the day.
It further said that the Rangers picked up three MQM workers, Qadir, Danish and Muhammad Naeem of Unit 116 in Baldia Town, from their houses.
The paramilitary soldiers also misbehaved towards female family members, including the mothers and sisters of those workers, besides ransacking the houses, it said.
Rangers personnel also took away a party worker of Unit 33-a, Muhammad Ali, from his house, while the party had received information that Rangers troops had raided the houses and arrested many workers from Bhangoria Goth.
The committee members deplored the “unjustified action” taken by the Rangers against the MQM workers on the pretext of forcible collection of Fitra and Zakat at a time when religious organisations, religious-cum-political parties and even banned outfits are openly collecting such donations in Karachi as well as in other parts of the country.
However, they said, collecting Zakat and Fitra by innocent MQM workers had been made a cognizable offence. They said not a single arrest of other parties’ workers had been reported so far.
They said the MQM or its welfare organisation could never be crushed through such planned conspiracies. They said MQM office-bearers and workers were being arrested in large numbers and fake cases lodged against them.
Local office-bearers of the party were present in the Gulbahar Sector of the MQM when Rangers raided it and arrested 16 workers along with the sector in-charge.
They said the Rangers were justifying their action by equating the collection of Zakat and Fitra with extortion.