They said they cultivate wheat on hundreds of acres of river bed and police operations not only make it hard for them to get the grain but it also takes wheat worth millions of rupees from them. “Yesterday, police commandos mounted another operation to recover the bodies but the gangsters put up a fierce fight and abducted 15 of the policemen”, officials were quoted as saying by the Express Tribune.
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With the Punjab government facing serious criticism over the police’s failure to contain the gangsters, a resolution demanding the provincial and the federal governments launch an army-led operation against the Chottu gang was submitted in the Punjab Assembly secretariat on Thursday.
The operation, named Zarb-e-Ahan, is being carried out at Kacha (riverbed area) of Indus River between Rajanpur and Rahim Yar Khan.
A strike force with paratroops from the Pakistan Rangers would also take part in the joint operation along with regular policemen and commandos of the force, he added. According to sources said that the Choto Gang is demanding police to leave the area on the police wireless sets they have snatched from the captive cops.
Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif today presided over a meeting in this regard and admonished senior police officers and bureaucracy for the “failed operation against Chotu gang”.
At least six police officials have been killed in the battle for the island, launched in a sweeping crackdown after a Taliban suicide bombing killed 72 people in Lahore, the provincial capital, last month. The heavily-armed gangsters fired indiscriminately at the advancing police party, killing six and forcing the rest to retreat. Most of the militants operating across Punjab belong to outlawed notorious terrorist groups known as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Sipah-e-Sahaba.
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He said that as many as 150 hardened criminals had been hiding in the forest, bordering Sindh and Balochistan.
