After release, jailed men vent anger on district nazim

The group of 19 people who were recently freed from prison after the police dropped section 324, and section 7 of Anti-Terrorism Act (7ATA), after hectic negotiation with central and local leadership of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F), plainly accused the nazim of playing a role for their imprisonment, and then trying to cashing in on the situation for political gains. Soon after their bail was accepted by a local court, local leadership of Jamat-e-Islami, led by Haji Maghfirat Shah, launched an attack against the police, especially District Police Officer (DPO) Ali Akbar Shah, Deputy Commissioner Shahab Yousafzai, demanding a judicial inquiry into the incident. Speaking at a presser on Tuesday, Ikramullah, one of the arrested people, warned the nazim to stop politics under the name of the detainees as it was due to him they had to face imprisonment. “You [Maghfirat] must stop using our names for political point scoring or else we’ll badly expose you. We’re not terrorists as it is you [district nazim] who is surrounded by terrorists,” he warned. He also accused Shah of protecting his men and getting them released from Denin jail before they were sent off to DI Khan prison, adding the nazim is intentionally creating religious tension in the area. Mr Ikram said the nazim hads always been against the Ismaili community of the area, and the recent incident was nothing but a well thought-out strategy by people like Maghfirat Shah to create hatred between the two communities through such tactics. “Whatever we had to face was done after consultation with district nazim but thanks to JUI-F leadership, the DC and the DPO, we were freed with dignity and the anti-terrorism sections against us were dropped,” he said. He also thanked the DC and DPO for shifting them back to Chitral prison, and said the district nazim along with Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali were pressing for shifting the prisoners to Mardan jail. They also thanked RPO Dera Ismail Khan, Syed Fida Hassan Shah, for his cooperation with them, saying we are personally indebted to him as he treated us like his Chitrali brethren. They also rejected the demand of Maghfirat Shah for holding a judicial inquiry into the incident, saying he was nobody to speak on their behalf, as it was he due to whom they had to face all this.]]>