Anti-encroachment operation: Residents resist clearing of railways’ land

Authorities vow to return with Rangers' assistance

SUKKUR: Angry residents forced an anti-encroachment team to suspend their operation on Saturday soon after it began demolishing illegal structures erected on land belonging to the Pakistan Railways.

Railway authorities and police, with the help of heavy machinery, started demolishing illegally constructed houses and shops in Garam Godi area near the high court building on Saturday.

As soon as the team demolished the first house and a shop, residents, including women and children, came out of their houses and started pelting stones at the authorities, which resulted in injury to one of the excavator's drivers, identified as Khalil.



In retaliation, the police resorted to a baton charge but then backed off owing to the presence of women and children among the protesters.

Residents burnt tyres and blocked the road, while shouting slogans against the railway authorities. Resultantly, the anti-encroachment team had to leave without completing the operation. Several residents complained against the 'high-handedness' of authorities, saying they had been living in the area since decades so how could the government claim the land belongs to it instead.

They revealed that the operation was started without issuing notices to residents, and proposed that if the land belonged to the Pakistan Railways, they were ready to pay for it in instalments, but would never condone the demolition of their houses and shops.

Railways Sukkur divisional superintendent Aijaz Ahmed Buriro told The Express Tribune the operation was not against the poor but aimed at clearing railways' land from encroachments. The operation is being carried in accordance with orders of the Supreme Court and we are going to complete it across the board, without any discrimination of poor or rich, he added.

Buriro explained that the operation was called off today but they will seek the assistance of Sindh Rangers and come back. 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2015.