Collecting Zakat, Fitra: MQM cries foul over ‘arrest’ of workers

Party leader says no law bars them from taking charity

KARACHI: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has accused the Rangers of arresting eight people, including five of its workers, from Dhabeji area for collecting Zakat and Fitra.

At an ‘emergency’ press conference at the Khursheed Begum Secretariat in Azizabad, MQM’s Rabita Committee member Shabbir Qaimkhani alleged that on Thursday night, the Rangers arrested eight people, including five MQM workers, from Water Pumping Station Colony in Dhabeji.

However, the paramilitary force has yet to give any official statement regarding the arrests.



Addressing the media, Qaimkhani stated that the MQM condemns the ‘illegal’ arrests, and questioned whether there was any law that barred the party from collecting charity donations in the holy month of Ramazan.



The MQM leader said that while banned terrorist organisations were openly collecting donations outside mosques and elsewhere in the city, [MQM’s welfare wing] Khidmat-e-Khalq Foundation, which works for the wellbeing of society, was being stopped from doing so.

Urging state institutions not to push MQM against the wall, he said a political movement cannot be ended through brute force and at gunpoint.

He also asked the relevant authorities to invite MQM so it could air their grievances to ‘them’ directly.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2^nd, 2016.