PESHAWAR – Police opened fire on a crowd demonstrating against power cuts in Bannu on Tuesday, killing one protester and injuring dozens. Several were arrested as police tear gassed and beat the demonstrators who were chanting slogans against “the mute and incompetent rulers” while demanding the government emancipate the masses from the protracted power load shedding. Police said the protester was killed during exchange of fire, but residents blamed police for the killing.
“One protester died and 14 were injured during the exchange of fire,” Farid Khan, a local police officer in Bannu told AFP by telephone. “Police used wooden sticks to beat the crowd back and tear gas to disperse them from the road, but they began pelting the police with stones,” said Khan. Akbar Hussain, another police official in Bannu told AFP that someone in the crowd had fired the first shots. “Police first fired in the air but some people in the crowd directly fired on us and the man was killed during a subsequent exchange of fire,” he said.
Hussain said the protesters had attacked a local electricity grid station to protest against power shortage. FC had been deployed in the area and a curfew has been imposed. Separately, police beat and tear gassed students of Peshawar’s Islamia College University when they were protesting at the campus against the administration’s decision of increasing the attendance ratio from 75 to 90 percent.
