‘Lyari was, is and will remain PPP’s fort’

The leaders of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Karachi have said that Lyari was the fort of the party and will like this.
Speaking at a press conference at the PPP Sindh Media Cell, provincial minister Rafiq Engineer, MPA Saleem Hingoro, Ismail Brohi and Fida Dhakan have said that “it would not possible to eliminate PPP from Lyari.”
“The operation in Lyari is against the criminal elements and not against any community be it Baloch, Sindhi or Urdu speaking.
“If any body is innocent, he must surrender before the law enforcement agencies and if they do not trust the police, they must surrender before the Rangers, the media or the Sindh High Court chief justice,” they said.
Engineer, a provincial minister from Lyari, said that it is the policy of PPP and the governor to conduct targeted operations in the city wherever criminals may be present.
“The raids were also conducted at the offices of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Awami National Party (ANP). But when the operation was started in Lyari, sophisticated weapons were used against the law enforcers due to which the conditions spiralled out of hand,” the PPP lawmaker said. “Like the residents of Lyari, we are also upset because of the situation.”
He asked the militants in Lyari to surrender their weapons as the targeted operations would continue be it Liaquatabad, Azizabad or Lyari.
Hingoro told the media that since the operation in Lyari started, the kidnapping for ransom cases have gone down by 30 percent.
Replying to a question, Engineer said that Zafar Baloch did not belong to PPP.
“Everybody knows that when the whole nation was weeping on the murder of Benazir Bhutto, Baloch was holding a flag busy in supporting an independent candidate in Lyari,” he added.
The minister said that it must be asked from the Rangers personnel that who had stopped them from entering in Lyari town. “In Lyari, not only PPP but other political parties are also working,” he added.