960405

Javed Ashraf laid to rest

Police resort to

teargas shelling

on infuriated

PML (N) workers

SHAHID MALIK

LAHORE: Police resorted to tear-gas shelling when dozens of PML (N) workers thronged the police lines only yards away from the cemetry where Javed Ashraf, a prominent party activist had earlier been laid to rest here on Friday.

After the burial at Bibi Pak Daman, which was attended among others by leader of the Opposition Nawaz Sharif, the workers raised anti-government slogans and attacked the police barracks, pelting bricks and flower pots and dismantling two ornamental cannons outside the main entrance. The police retaliated with tear-gas shells, leading to minor injuries. A press photographer was also wounded.

Contrary to all expectations, police presence had not been visible around Masjid-e-Shuhada at Regal Chowk, where hundreds of mourners, some of them carrying black flags and banners asking for judicial and Divine Justice, attended the funeral prayers after the Friday congregation.

On the three kilometre route to the graveyard, the crowd largely remained peaceful, though window panes of a well-known publishing house were smashed, an angry attempt at throwing stones at the Punjab Assembly building had to be foiled by the PML (N) leaders and a sign board outside a PPP branch office was destroyed by the infuriated workers.

Javed Ashraf, a city office-bearer of the Muslim League and Political Secretary to the leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Assembly, Shahbaz Sharif, had been killed in a firing incident on Thursday while an anti PPP demonstration of the PML (N). On the 17th death anniversary of the late prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was in progress. The PML (N) has blamed the police for the killing.