Senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Senator Raza Rabbani on Wednesday lodged a protest in the Senate over the police action against people protesting over power shortage in Faisalabad and termed it a “state terrorism.”
“Yesterday saw the worst show of state terrorism when people were protesting over shortage of electricity in Faisalabad,” said Rabbani while speaking on a point of order soon after Finance Minister Ishaq Dar presented budgetary proposals for the fiscal year 2013-14 in the house for debate.
The PPP senator regretted that the Punjab police had “brutally tortured” the protesters after “scaling walls of the houses”. He said the electronic media showed footage of police personnel using axes to break the doors to enter houses. He said a number of women and children were reportedly injured in the police action.
Rabbani said staging protest demonstrations was a democratic right of people and there was no justification for such action against citizens who had been forced to take to the streets to protest against long hours of load-shedding.
He urged the Leader of House Raja Zafarul Haq, who belongs to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), to take up the matter with his party and the Punjab government.
Haq informed the house that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had taken notice of the incident and already suspended five police officials. Haq said the Punjab government had also ordered an inquiry into the matter. He assured the house that those responsible would be punished accordingly.
