Chauntra turns out to be ‘no go area’

Rawalpindi : One person was killed and 12 others sustained critical bullet injuries in a fresh gun battle between two rival land grabbing mafias and owners of two housing societies at Chakri Road, Chauntra, the police said, adding that three were injured were in critical condition.

The hospital sources indicated that the wounded people were Afghan militias who were hired for warfare and to provide security to their lords. “Chauntra has turned out to be a ‘no go area, where no law exists and the area police don’t dare to enter the ‘prohibited area’ to overcome the deteriorating law and order situation,” locals expressing their anger, said.

The police, however, have rounded up dozens of people for investigation but the Afghan gangsters managed to escape after creating unrest and fear in and around the battlefield. The enmity between lords of housing societies at Chakri Road, Chauntra has grown to be a fatal private war among the authoritative land moguls who have ruined the law with the backup of the local police, the locals assumed.

“Hostility among them has claimed lives of hundreds of innocent people who have offered sacrifices to prove the supremacy of land grabbing mafias since the societies were established,” the land owners of the adjacent areas spoke out when contacted by this scribe.

“The mighty lords of the private housing societies have hired court absconders and proclaimed offenders as well as criminal gangs involved in heinous crimes including killings, armed robberies, kidnapping for ransom and anti-state activities,” they maintained. Even, the lords took on militia force from Afghanistan to shed blood of innocent people to keep occupying the lands grabbed from the locals, the dwellers maintained.

In the recent past, the police arrested one of the owners of a housing society incessantly creating law and order situation. He was produced before that court of law but the court rejected the bail application. He was handed over to the police, the police sources said adding as the police van reached the exit gate, double cabin vehicles loaded with Afghan militia equipped with lethal firearms, intercepted the police van, dragged the arrested accused out, loaded him on their double cabin vehicle and disappeared from the scene. The sources disclosed that the accused was still at large and the police had failed to arrest him.

Chauntra police have booked the security guards of both the housing projects as suspects in the case of using firearms with the intention to kill the opponent, riot, and cause loss to the private property. However, the owners of the housing societies, who employed and deployed the armed guards in the first place, have only been named as abettors. Chauntra Police Station, taking it as a routine crime, lodged FIR against the unidentified armed men involved in attacking the housing project.