January 09, 2008	Wednesday	Zilhaj 29, 1428

LARKANA, Jan 8: Qambar police on Tuesday registered a case against 1,500 unidentified people charging them with burning and ransacking the district council hall of the Qambar-Shahdakdot district.

The accountant of the naib district nazim Farman Jagirani lodged the case and claimed that the district had suffered Rs3 million loss in damages to infrastructure.

Police had filed 74 FIRs at different police stations in Larkana and Qambar-Shahdadkot districts following the riots, which erupted after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, charging around 16,000 persons (unidentified) with damaging public and private property.

The cases about under-trial prisoners’ escape from the judicial lock-ups in Shahdadot, Qambar and Warah towns were registered against 22 policemen including a jailer Fida Hussain Abbasi. Of them two head constables, Khan Muhammed Jalbani and Muhammed Saffar Bhatti, had been arrested.

Sources in police said that the department had sought help of the influential people of the area to bring back the fugitives.

Of the 71 prisoners who had managed to escape from the judicial lock-ups in the three towns only 37 had so far surrendered to sessions judges concerned, the sources said.

Only nine of the 17 prisoners involved in minor crimes who had fled from Shahdadkot judicial lock-up had returned while the rest were still at large, 17 of the 43 prisoners who had escaped from Qambar judicial lock-up had surrendered and seven of the 11 prisoners who had escaped from Warah judicial lock-up had come back to face charges, the sources said.

Most of the fugitives facing charges of murder and other serious crimes had not yet surrendered.