LOWER DIR: Jamaat-i-Islami leader and former senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan has alleged that President Asif Ali Zardari didn’t sign the Societies Registration (Amendment) Act 2024 into law and returned the legislation back to the parliament under “external pressure”.

He claimed while addressing Khatam-i-Bukhari Sharif function at a seminary in Koto here on Friday.

Seminary head and former district nazim Ihsanul Haq and other religious figures also spoke on the occasion.

Mr Ahmad said about four million students, including girls, were enrolled in total 30,000 seminaries across the country, getting free education without government support.

Ex-senator Mushtaq vows no one can stop law’s implementation

He said the bill guaranteed seminaries’ rights, but it was not signed by the president because of some “foreign pressure”.

“No one can stop the bill’s implementation,” he vowed, claiming it would ensure seminaries’ registration and their audit, besides ensuring provision of contemporary education to the pupils.

The former lawmaker said Palestinians had been killed for the last 14 years but the Muslim world had failed to stop their genocide.

He said that though the US government had released people charged with espionage and killers of the US citizens but it kept criminal silence over the release of Dr Aafia Siddique. He said that he would soon visit the US to meet the jailed Pakistani physician.

The JI leader said the committee announced by the government to hold talks with PTI was powerless. He asked the PTI leadership and workers to shun the politics of “hatred and violence”.

Mr Ahmad also condemned the crackdown on Tehreek-i-Insaf workers. He asked the party’s leadership to withdraw its call for civil disobedience.

Regarding the lawlessness in former Fata, the Jamaat leader said that though the Pakistan Army had been manning the region for long still the acts of terrorism continued there unabated.

Robbers’ gang busted:
The Khadagzai police on Friday claimed to have arrested four robbers and recovered the items they had looted from a house and a shop.

Briefing reporters, SHO Naeem Khan said robbers, identified as Idrees of Chakdara, and Asif, Shakil and Bilal of Malakand had looted the house of a resident, Tufail Ahmad, and a shop in Khadagzai.

He said the police recovered a laptop and other items from their possession.

Meanwhile, district police officer Salim Abbas Kulachi along with DSPs Fakhre Alam and Syed Ahmad Khan visited the police station and appreciated the cops over the arrests.

He asked the police officers accompanying him to crack down on drug smugglers and other outlaws in their respective areas.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2024