‘Mock Exercise’ halts Metro Bus service

Rawalpindi : Thousands of passengers faced fear and panic when well equipped police officials with sniffer dogs suddenly appeared in all metro stations and ordered them to vacate stations immediately in Rawalpindi and Islamabad on Tuesday.

The city district government, Rawalpindi without any announcement stopped Metro Bus Service (MBS) in twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad at 2 p.m. The MBS was not restarted till filing of this report.

The Deputy Commissioner (DC), Rawalpindi official spokesman Shahid Shah told ‘The News’ that we received notification to immediately stop Metro Bus Service. He said that MBS was stopped due to security reason. “But, police will tell the true picture regarding stoppage of MBS,” he said.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Operation Muhammad Qadir said that we stopped MBS due to ‘Mock Exercise’ of security. We were monitoring security competency of our Jawans to avoid any untoward incident. Therefore we got vacated all metro stations in twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, he said. He said that we could not inform public in advance about the ‘exercise’, therefore passengers have to face difficulties.

The passengers have appealed to the higher authorities that they should be informed in advance before conducting such kind of activities. They suffered a lot due to such kind of sudden decisions, public denounced.

Deeba Zia, a working woman said that I was standing at Chandni Chowk metro station when some of police with sniffers dogs appeared and ordered them to vacate station immediately. Everyone was afraid of seeing the situation and ran with fear on the occasion, she said.

Muhammad Bashir, another passenger said that he was going to office in Islamabad when police officials ordered them to immediately vacate the station. Everyone was in panic to see police with sniffer dogs in the station, he said.