Complaint against Anti-Encroachment Force chief registered

A group of people shouting slogans on the Super Highway against the razing of farmhouses in the Malir district during an anti-encroachment operation ended their protest on Saturday evening after the police accepted an application against the chief of the Anti-Encroachment Force.

The District Malir administration along with the Sindh Building Control Authority had apparently launched an anti-encroachment operation against only two farmhouses in the district’s Memon Goth.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Vice President and provincial assembly opposition leader Haleem Adil Sheikh later claimed that the farmhouses belonged to his brother and cousin. But Local Government Minister Nasir Hussain Shah said that the operation was against encroachments in the Malir district.

Hours after the anti-encroachment operation, the police accepted an application against Anti-Encroachment Force Director Tariq Dharejo. Sheikh was also present at the Gadap City police station when the application was submitted by the Palm Village farmhouse’s security guard Ramzan Ali Lakho.

The applicant said that he had been working at the farmhouse as a security guard for the past decade, adding that at around 10am on Saturday, 60 to 70 armed men arrived at the farmhouse and one of them introduced himself as Anti-Encroachment Force Director Tariq Dharejo.

“I told him that PTI leader Haleem Adil Sheikh’s cousin Tariq Qureshi owns the farmhouse,” the security guard replied to the director when he asked him if Sheikh was the owner of the farmhouse.

“Then he [Dharejo] phoned someone, and calling him CM sahib informed him that the farmhouse owner is Sheikh’s cousin, following which the person on the other end directed him to demolish the farmhouse and loot the valuables.”

The applicant claimed that Dharejo then asked the anti-encroachment officials to demolish the farmhouse, saying that the operation continued for at least four hours until the media arrived on the scene.

The guard claimed that the officials had left with cash, mobile phones, goats and other things they robbed from the farmhouse. Police said that they have accepted the application and launched an investigation.

On the other hand, it has been reported that the Ministry of Interior is likely to take action against the director of the Anti-Encroachment Force for conducting the operation allegedly without intimation.