Bring back our people, demands Maula Bux Chandio

PPP leader accuses PML-N of involvement in disappearance of three party leaders

HYDERABAD: Playing the well-known 'Sindh card', Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has accused Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz's (PML-N) federal government of being responsible for the alleged enforced disappearance of its Sindh-based leaders.

"[Interior Minister] Chaudhry Nisar has been making threats for a long time. Now the implementation has begun," alleged PPP's central information secretary, Maula Bux Chandio, at a press conference in Hyderabad on Sunday.

Three PPP figures, considered to be close associates of the party's co-chairperson, Asif Ali Zardari, have gone missing over the last week. In the most recent case, a four-wheel vehicle of Tando Allahyar-based PPP leader Ghulam Qadir Marri was found abandoned on the Indus Highway near Thermal Power House in Jamshoro. All the four passengers, including Marri, were missing.



Earlier, Ashfaq Laghari and Nawab Laghari were also allegedly whisked away from Islamabad and Karachi, respectively. "How is it possible that you kidnap Sindh's people, you keep Sindh's people in secret confinement and not present them in court?" Chandio questioned.

The party's information secretary warned that any action considered to be targeting Zardari will be held as a move against the PPP. "What we are suffering doesn't happen in a noora kushti [phoney fight]."

He argued that the centre's punitive politics are a reaction to the recent activation of the PPP's Punjab chapter with repeated and extensive visits to the bigger province by both Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. "It's possible that the enforced disappearance of our people in Sindh is a machination to send Zardari back from Punjab to Sindh," he alleged.=



He complained that the three leaders were whisked away but neither the Sindh government nor the province's police were informed. "In the past as well, tortured bodies of [the] people of Sindh were sent to their homes. This vindictive mode of politics will harm the federation," he warned, adding that the disappearances are creating unrest in the province.

He accused the PML-N of resorting to the politics of nurturing political enmities as it prepared for the next general elections. Chandio also raked the federal power minister, Abid Sher Ali, over the coals for what he described as 'discrimination' with the province.

According to him, Ali has threatened to install low-voltage electric transformers in Sindh, which will not even power air-conditioners.

Chandio also commented on the controversial removal of Sindh IG Allah Dino Khawaja, saying if he cannot maintain a working relationship with the provincial government, he has no right to remain on the post.

Separately, PPP workers in Hyderabad staged a protest outside the press club and shouted slogans against the federal government while demanding early recovery of the three missing leaders.