PPP senator writes to CEC for party workers’ release

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Taj Haider, who is also in-charge of the party’s Central Election Cell, has demanded immediate release of the party’s workers who had been arrested from NA-127, Lahore, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Monday.

In a letter to the chief election commissioner (CEC), the senator has also demanded action against those responsible for their arrests.

He has said it is a matter of concern that new entrants to the party are being arrested from the constituency from where PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is contesting the election.  “The Punjab Police has spread terror in the constituency so that those willing to support the party could be prevented from doing so,” he has alleged.

“Yesterday Shehzad and Shehbaz, along with other former PTI workers from Bihar Colony, announced their decision to join the PPP. But the police arrested them,” he has said, adding, “And when Zulfiqar Ali Badar, our election campaign in-charge, talked to the CCPO for their release, the latter used derogatory language against him; so derogatory that it cannot be mentioned.”

Similarly, the senator says that PML-N’s woman councilor Khalida Perveen, too, was taken into custody and shifted to Liaquatabad police station when she announced to join the PPP. “And when Badar talked to the CCPO, he told him that Khalida had been arrested in connection with the FIR registered against her six months ago. “How ironic that no action was taken against her when she was in the PML-N. But the day she joined our party, she was taken into custody,” he wondered.

The senator says that the party has fears that if the police were not stopped from such acts of highhandedness, its fascism will increase.

Reporter: Rozeena Ali