MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir`s riot police resorted to baton charge to break up a protest by a group of contractual policemen on Thursday.

The protesters were demanding regularisation of their services as well as payment of past several months` salaries to some 228 policemen.

The protesters, who were also wearing police uniforms, were sitting on rental chairs on the pavement of a bustling thoroughfare along district headquarters (DHQ) complex since morning, thus catching attention of all motorists and passers-by throughout the day.

Small posters, inscribed with slogans about their plight and demands, were displayed on a wall behind them.

Talking to Dawn, Zahid Attari, one of the protesters, said as many as 538 constables had been inducted in AJK police on contractual basis, some as back as in 2008, to serve in different projects, such as Neelum-Jhelum and Patrind power projects.

The appointments were made on atwo-year contract, but the services continued even afterwards though without any formal renewal of their contracts, he claimed.

After the inception of the PML-N government in AJK in August 2016, appointments of all contractual police constables were terminated, forcing them to stage a similar protest at the same spot.

The protest had however come to an end after an assurance by the government that all of them would be gradually regularised against vacant posts of constables, he recalled.

He lamented that while that (2016) commitment had not been fulfilled, at least 228 contractual constables were deprived of their salaries for the past several months, which had virtually brought their families at the brink of starvation.

`We have staged this protest at the end of our tether,` he said.

Eyewitnesses said that senior police and administration officials made at least four attempts to persuade the protestorstoleave the spot,but to no avail.

At about 5:45pm, assistant commissioner Asim Khalid Awan and deputy superintendent of police Riaz Mughal arrived at the scene with a final notice to the protesters.

As the protesters refused to leave the spot, angry officers ordered riot police to forcibly evict them from there.

In a press note, deputy commissioner Masoodur Rehman claimed that the protesters were handed over a notification regarding the release of their overdue salaries and were also assured that the government would sympathetically consider their confirmation issue.

However, they refused to budge and instead demanded that the confirmation notification(s) should be handed over to them there and then, he said.

He maintained that action against them was taken as a last resort, because they had put on police uniforms and were not only violating section 144 of CrPC but also mocking the law of the land. Tariq Naqash