NA-237 by-polls: Shirazis lose polling agent before elections

HYDERABAD:

Two days before the by-elections in NA-237 constituency of Thatta, the chief polling agent of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s candidate Syed Riaz Hussain Shah Shirazi, Haneef Memon, has been arrested.

The police were, however, reluctant to declare the arrest even though he was taken away by policemen in broad daylight from a commercial area. It took some five hours for the police to disclose where he was taken and that too after the supporters of Shirazis shutdown markets and blocked highways. The protest demonstrations were led by the family elder, MPA Aijaz Shah Shirazi, on Sajjawal-Thatta Road.

“Memon was picked up by the Garden police of Karachi in connection with a case registered in 2009. He was shown as an absconder,” Thatta SSP Haseeb Afzal Beg told the protesters. The PML-N candidate accused his rival from the Pakistan Peoples Party for the arrest. “Why wasn’t he apprehended during the last four years? He is a well-known person in Thatta and he moves around freely,” he said, while talking to The Express Tribune. Memon is also the brother of PPP’s MPA Rukhsana Shah.

The by-election are scheduled for August 22. PPP’s Shamsunnissa Memon and PML-N’s Shirazi are the favourite candidates in the constituency. By late Monday evening, Riaz Shirazi said the police are still not confirming the arrest of Haneef Memon. “The police say they don’t know where he is,” he told The Express Tribune.

Meanwhile, the Super Highway that connects Karachi with Hyderabad has been blocked by Shirazi supporters at Luni Kot, some 45 kilometers off Hyderabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2013.