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Hussain Khanwala resounds with calls for `long march`

By Our Correspondent 2015-08-19
KASUR: Boycotting the joint investigation team and after collapse of their dialogue with police, the complainants in the child abuse case on Tuesday resorted to calls for a `long march` on Islamabad, without giving a date for the protest.

After the complainants boycotted the JIT, demanding withdrawal of `fake cases` registered against them, and their negotiations with police failed, announcements were made using the loud-speakers of Hussain Khanwala village mosques, urging the villagers to `get prepared for a long march on Islamabad`.

The announcements that charged the villagers also alarmed the police that had earlier clashed with protesters `marching on Lahore` for registering their protest in front of the Punjab Assembly.

Following the announcements the police held a meeting with the complainant`s lawyer Latif Basra and some supporters of the victims in a bid to convince them to abandon the protest plan, sources said.

Four new complaints -Waheed, Muhammad Tahir, Tayyab Amin and Zaman Anwar of the same village, aged between 16 and 20 years, surfaced in the scam on Tuesday and lodged an FIR.

The total number of FIRs of the case lodged with Ganda Singh police is now 22.

Meanwhile, some of the witnesses from the accused party recorded their statements to the JIT.

Appearing before the JIT as witnesses of the accused, four people -Khadim Hussain, Riaz Ahmed Farulch, Abdul Ghafoor and Riaz Ahmed -recorded their statements.

The JIT also summoned Riaz Ahmed Bhutta and Master Zafar and recorded their statements.

On the other hand, lawyer of a complainant, Waleed Ashraf, submitted to the JIT that one of the suspects, Adnan Faheem, son of Master Zafar, did not subjected his client to sodomy.

Earlier, two victims who had submitted affidavits to the Ganda Singh police saying two of the suspects were not involved in the scam, had later told a local court that they gave the statements under duress.

The court had rejected the bail pleas of the five suspects.