Pray, don’t play

How many more innocent people will have to die before conscience of our incompetent rulers and bureaucrats is shaken?

Over the weekend, there was yet another horrifying for the people of Karachi to lament over. At 1pm on Saturday, a young woman – a wife, mother and daughter - Taskeen Asad, was shot dead in her car shortly after she had dropped her elder son to a computer institute in Phase 6 of Defence Housing area. She was shot in front of her younger son, a three year old, who was sitting in the car at that time.

According to witnesses, a lone assailant riding a motorcycle was responsible for the murder.

Residents have complained that muggings have become quite frequent in the area. They also identified spots where they take place: Sea View, Bukhari Commercial, Badar Commercial and 26th Street. All these fall under the jurisdiction of the infamous Darakshan Police Station.

Police have speculated that this could be a sectarian attack, as if this explains it all and there is no need to take the matter further. This is also a trend that has now become the norm. Blame anything and everything on sectarian, ethnic or political violence.

Darakshan police station is notorious. Many high profile crimes have taken place within its jurisdiction and most remain unsolved. These include the White corolla case (murderer still not punished), Shahzeb murder case (murderer about to be set free), the Hamza Ahmad murder case (where the murderer is yet to be arrested) and the Suleiman Lashari murder case (murderers are still at large). Of course, poor police work comes at a price.

Take a round of Darakshan’s jurisdiction. In one out of ten houses, there is a police van standing outside. There must be over two hundred police vans and more than four thousand policemen stations for the pleasure of the high and mighty.

People of Karachi see these high and mighty characters often. They are the one who try to push you off the road when you are driving in the narrow lanes of the ill-planned DHA or other parts of the city like the ever-blocked Shahare Faisal. Every time they do that, the PTI wins another voter.

These police vans and policemen should be on active duty. Instead, at state expense, they are the gunmen, the guards, the gardeners, the cooks and the odd-job men of those who are in one way or another aligned to the ruling party or are related to the CM or one of his cronies.

But if you don’t have the contacts, you can hire law enforcers. One constabulary has already started doing this in Karachi. You see them standing outside cinemas and malls. These are all government servants paid salaries from the public exchequer which in turn is funded by losers like me who pay their income tax.

Who is renting them out, one should ask our diligent interior minister Chaudhry Nisar, who just recently said that he holds government funds more holy than his own money.

So it comes somewhat as a surprise that only last week Sindh police chief Ghulam Haider Jamali informed his superiors that the city of the Quaid had become “crime free.” According to a news report, updating the CM on achievements about maintenance of peace in the metropolis, IGP Jamali informed the meeting that for the last two to three months, neither any case of kidnapping nor any bank dacoity had been reported. Even no incident of terrorism.

In return, the CM expressed his satisfaction and directed the officers to speed up their action against terrorists, extortionists and kidnappers. The PPP government, he said, was “committed to restoration of peace in the city. “ One doesn’t know who is lying to whom.

A few days later comes another report: Sindh CM Qaim Ali Shah approved appointment of 11,000 more police personnel. One wonders whose house these young men will serve. Maybe they need some more khan-samas.

On a serious note, much of the crime that takes place in the city is committed by these off-duty policemen and security guards. How many more innocent people will have to die before the conscience of our incompetent rulers and bureaucrats is shaken? Public efforts usually come to naught: the Citizens Police initiative in Sea View was ended after a LEA forcibly took over its office and established its own. So much for public representation.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2014.

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