100 arrested after failed anti-encroachment drive in Hyderabad

Five policemen injured as residents resist operation on amenity plot

HYDERABAD: After an anti-encroachment operation in Qasimabad, Hyderabad, on Wednesday was unsuccessfully halted with minor injuries to five policemen and damage to the government vehicles, Hyderabad police on Thursday arrested over 100 people. According to the police sources, women and teenagers are among those arrested.

The police led by assistant commissioner Qasimabad Fida Shoro began an anti-encroachment operation in Qasimabad phase II to get vacated an amenity plot reserved for a park on which the squatters had built their residences.

The action was taken on Sindh High Court's order on a petition filed by a local resident Ali Hassan Jatoi.

However, the residents resisted the operation, clashed with the police anti-encroachment team and pelted their vehicles with stone. The mob overturned a vehicle of Anti-Encroachment Cell on the road. Some other vehicles were also damaged.

The residents claimed that they have been living in the area for around four decades and they blamed Jatoi and the district administration for planning their eviction from their abodes to occupy the land.

Hyderabad Development Authority's official Ashfaq Magsi registered FIR against the local people at Naseem Nagar police station late on Wednesday night. As many as 35 people were nominated with names in the FIR while 133 unknown women and 120 unknown men were also booked.

Among more than a hundred people who were reportedly arrested, the judicial magistrate sent 14 men and five women on judicial remand to jail.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2019.