Rangers tortured MQM workers in jails: Farooq Sattar

MQM’s senior leader says workers are getting calls from unknown numbers, forcing them to switch their allegiance

Personnel of the paramilitary Rangers tortured several Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) workers who are imprisoned in various jails, party MNA and senior deputy convener Dr Farooq Sattar said on Sunday.

“Around 40 under-trial MQM workers were beaten up in jails and were forced to give ‘favourable’ statements and after that they were locked in their cells all day. This happened day before yesterday,” Sattar said while addressing a press conference at party's Khursheed Begum Secretariat in Azizabad.

1. MQM Rabita Committee Press hold a Conference at Khursheed Begum Secretariat Azizabad. #CleanKarachiCampaign pic.twitter.com/YX2vi3EOEQ

— MQM (@OfficialMqm) March 13, 2016

Further, the senior MQM leader  in a veiled reference to the newly-formed political party of former MQM leader and ex-Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal claimed his party activists and leaders were getting suspicious phone calls from unknown numbers, forcing them to switch their allegiance with “groups from the other side of the bridge.”

Sattar appealed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Sindh homer minister to immediately intervene in the matter.

The development comes over a week after former Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal, who returned home from self-imposed exile on March 03, launched a blistering attack on MQM chief Altaf Hussain and challenged the ‘iron grip’ of the MQM on the city by forming a new party.



Kamal — who won wide support as mayor of Karachi from 2005 to 2010 for his efforts to ease traffic and improve public services — accused Altaf of working for India’s premier spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), destroying two generations of Mohajirs (Urdu-speaking people) and issuing threats under the influence of alcohol.

Later, while rejecting all allegations against Hussain, MQM’s convenor Nadeem Nusrat had advised the country's establishment to let go of its politics of dividing the party and instead talk to the party chief.

The MQM leadership had came out with a calm response to Mustafa Kamal’s explosive news conference on March 3, claiming the party had been bearing the same accusations for decades.