FAISALABAD: Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (Fesco) employees on Monday night succeeded in retrieving their office that was allegedly occupied by lawyers.

The employees had disconnected power supply to the district bar and circuithouseforcingthe ofhcialsand district bar association office-bearers to resolve the issue.

On Monday, some lawyers had allegedly vandalised and locked the Fesco complaint office in Civil Lines, saying the land belonged to the bar.

They had also arranged labourers and got the rear wall of the office demolished to include it in the bar premises.

Following the incident, the All Pakistan Wapda Hydro Electric Workers Union Fesco chapter gave a protest call for Tuesday against the alleged highhandedness of the lawyers. On Monday night, the Fesco employees had staged a protest demonstration against the lawyers demanding repossession of the office.

On Tuesday, Fesco employees of adjacent districts reached theDistrict Council Chowk to join the protest, but were informed that the issue had been resolved.

Sources privy to the development told Dawn that Fesco officials had been requesting the district government to resolve the issue as they had set up their office legally. However, none of the officers bothered to respond, which forced the union and officials to disconnect electricity supply to the bar and circuit house.

They said the bar was also defaulter of Fesco and owed it approximately Rs1.4 million.

A lawyer claimed the land belonged to the district bar and they had surrendered it for some time.

Lawyers would not accept exploitation of their rights and Fesco had to vacate this land sooner or later. He conceded that possession of the office had been handed over to Fesco.

TORTURED: Dijkot police allegedly picl(ed up four employees of a marriage hall in connection with a property dispute of their employer and subjected them to severe torture.

The judicial magistrate has ordered medical examination of the [torturej victims.

Adnan Sheikh told Dawn that hehad set up a marriage hall on a rented land and he had a property dispute with the landlord. He said Dijkot SHO Asif Nadeem also appeared before the court in this case a couple of days ago.

On Saturday night, a team, led by the SHO raided the [marriage] hall, he said and added that some men were in police uniform and others in civvies. He said the police team allegedly thrashed hall employees and picked up Faisal, Babar, Imran and Farooq.

`We had visited the CPO office on Tuesday to lodge a complaint but [CPO] Athar Ismail was not available,` Adnan Sheikh said.

He said the Iqbal Town SP had been approached with a request that the raid [on the marriage hall] was unjustified. `It was the SP who got the staffers released; however, no action has been taken against the policemen so far.

He said surveillance cameras installed at the marriage hall recorded the entire episode [of police torture] and the team took the system with them.

The CPO was contacted for his comments, however, he did not respond to the message.