Raid on meeting: Rangers swoop down on MQM workers’ moot

Round up dozens from a meeting where 500 loyalists were in attendance

KARACHI: Rangers on Wednesday night conducted a raid at an office of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and rounded up dozens of workers affiliated with the party.

Eyewitnesses said a heavy contingent of rangers reached and cordoned off the office when a general workers’ meeting – in which more than 500 workers and local leaders were present – was underway.

Rangers took dozens of workers into custody and shifted them to undisclosed location. They also seized record from the party’s office, they added.

After the raid, the MQM leadership rushed to the spot but they were not allowed to go inside the office. Following the incident, panic spread in the area. Shops in the locality were also closed down while police blocked the routes leading to the area for vehicular traffic.

Later hundreds of people, including women, staged a sit-in protest at Abul Hassan Isphani Road against the raid and demanded immediate release of the workers. Police also resorted to aerial firing to disperse the protesters. Meanwhile Rangers officials were not available for comments when contacted.

Meanwhile, the MQM’s Rabita Committee strongly condemned the ‘arbitrary arrests of dozens of MQM workers and raid at MPA office at Gulshan-e-Maymar locality of Karachi by Sindh Rangers’.

According to a statement issued by the party, the members of Rabita Committee, MNA Muzammil Quraishi, Minister for Youth Affairs Faisal Sabzwari, office-bearers and more than 500 male and female workers were present at the time of raid.

It said the committee also expressed its ultimate condemnations for fatal torturing of MQM workers and supporters. “Preventing the MQM to serve people is a shameful prejudice of feudal mentality,” it added.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2014.