Political victimisation?: Former mayor of Thatta claims PPP targeting him

Sherazi family had joined the PML-N after winning provincial, national assembly seats.

HYDERABAD:

The former mayor of Thatta, Syed Shafqat Shah Sherazi, who belongs to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, has accused the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) provincial government of subjecting him and his family to political victimisation.

Sherazi, along with six others, escaped arrest on Thursday by securing a Sindh High Court stay barring the police from apprehending him without the court’s permission.

“The PPP government is taking political revenge by implicating us in fake police cases,” Sherazi said while talking to the media in Sujawal. “Sending policemen from over a dozen police stations to arrest us only shows how frustrated they have grown of our political struggle.”

Sherazi added that the action against his family is a reaction to their criticism of the corruption of PPP ministers and local leaders in the Thatta and Sujjawal districts. “I request Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to take notice of the vindictive actions of the PPP’s government in Sindh.”

The police force raided over half a dozen areas to arrest Sherazi, his cousin Maqbool Shah Sherazi and five other associates. The police say they acted on a court order. Hussain Mallah, a small grower, had complained in the district and sessions court of Thatta that Sherazi had illegally occupied 80 acres of his land, and had also assaulted him and threatened to kill him. Mallah also claimed in his complaints that he was assaulted on Wednesday, a day before the police carried out the raids.

However, Sherazi’s family labelled it a politically motivated case. “How come the police gear into action so fast on the complaint of a grower?” they asked. “There are thousands of other growers around Sindh who are being subjected to various miseries by the PPP’s feudal lords but their complaints are ignored.”

The Sherazi family won one National Assembly and two Sindh Assembly seats in May, 2013, elections as independent candidates and later joined the PML-N.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2014.