Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Sindh leaders have alleged that the Pakistan Peoples Party’s provincial government has enslaved the police force and made the police chief powerless, while all the powers are being used by Farrukh Bashir, personal staff officer to the chief minister.
Talking to the media outside an anti-terrorism court on Saturday, Haleem Adil Sheikh, the opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly, said the PPP government had made Sindh a police state and was using the law enforcement body to victimise political opponents.
Sheikh, who is also the PTI’ central vice-president, said political opponents in Sindh were being involved in fabricated cases, and he himself was indicted in two false cases nine months ago by “economic terrorists”.
“Recently, CM Murad Ali Shah was annoyed when Bashir did not get a promotion from Grade 19 to Grade 20. If the PPP leadership had had authority, they would have elevated Bashir to the post of IG Sindh,” he said.
Sheikh said the provincial police chief should follow the footsteps of his predecessors, AD Khuwaja and Kaleem Imam, and honour the prestige of his post by challenging the PPP’s designs.
“State lands ware being encroached in the darkness of the night under the patronage of police in District East, Karachi,” he said. “A vacation notice was issued on directives of CM Shah to a village comprising more than one thousand houses.”
Anti-encroachment police had become an encroachment force in the province and they were facilitating squatters to occupy lands worth billions of rupees, while on the other hand a Mukhtiarkar shot dead a person on suspicion of stealing a peacock, Sheikh further alleged.
Referring to a statement of PPP MPA and Chairman Sindh Child Protection Authority Shamim Mumtaz about the feudal system, the PTI leader said Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had taken steps to root out the feudal system from the country, but his successors were promoting it. “Waderas are not fathers of the area,” he said.
Responding to a query, he said Pakistan heavily depended on imports of POL products, but petroleum prices were lower in the country in comparison to a 100 per cent rise in the international market, as Covid-19 had triggered inflation across the world.
Earlier, Sheikh appeared before the anti-terrorism court at the Central Prison Karachi. The court adjourned the hearing till November 13.