People in 53 2L, a suburban village of Okara, on Saturday attacked the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) team which had gone there for recovery, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
They beat up Line Superintendent Muzammil Hussain, ALM WAPDA and other members of the team with sticks and rods, tore their clothes and later held them hostage.
The team came under attack by a six-member gang when they severed the village’s power connection due to the non-payment of bills.
Soon after learning about the incident, personnel of the city’s Saddar police station reached the scene and got members of the team freed.
Police also arrested one of the attackers named Ibrahim and started conducting raids for the arrest of the remaining five members of the gang.
Later a case was registered against the suspects on the complaint of SDO People’s Colony sub-division.
Crackdown on power thieves, bills defaulters continues
On the other hand, countrywide crackdown on power pilferers and bills defaulters continued on Saturday as 60 more electricity thieves were arrested in Gujranwala, thus bringing the total number of people arrested in the Gujranwala Electric Power Company (GEPCO) region to 871.
Power connections of all these consumers were severed.
The GEPCO has also issued lists of habitual bill defaulters who owe over Rs100,000 to it.
Similarly, cases were registered against 92 power thieves in Hafizabad.
In all cases have been registered against 797 power pilferers in the region so far, while 32 have been arrested.
As many as 45 landowners, too, were caught stealing electricity.
WAPDA has made the recovery of over Rs7 billion during the last 15 days of the operation.
Similarly, eight industrial, 32 commercial and 786 domestic consumers were caught stealing electricity.
Likewise, 95 more cases were registered in Arifwala.
In Chakwal, police and ISLAMABAD ELECTRIC SUPPLY COMPANY (IESCO) employees, in their joint operation, caught four power pilferers red-handed, thus bringing the total number of people arrested in Chakwal circle to 38.
Reporters: Shahzad Khan, Shahzad Ahmad, Mohsin Jaffery, Zahid Iqbal Rana and Mian Mazhar