Crackdown continues: Ten more MQM offices razed

Around 200 unit offices and 26 sector offices have also been sealed

KARACHI: Ten more Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) offices in Karachi were razed as the crackdown against its illegal offices continued on the third consecutive day.

A total of 20 MQM offices have been demolished while 200 others remain sealed since a crackdown was initiated against the party on Thursday.

On Saturday, offices were razed in Al-Hilal society, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Baloch Colony, Mehmoodabad, Lines Area and Landhi by the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) amid tight security cover.

A score of residents looted valuables including televisions, computers, chairs and other infrastructure while the MQM offices were being demolished in Lines Area. A crowd of people also clashed with each other over looting the valuables. Later police and Rangers reached the site and controlled the situation.



“The offices are being demolished by KDA and KMC [Karachi Metropolitan Corporation],” said KDA official Jamil Baloch while speaking to The Express Tribune. “Earlier on the first day of the crackdown, the offices were demolished by the Rangers.”

On Thursday and Friday, about ten party offices were demolished in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Kharadar, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Sacchal, Landhi and Shah Faisal areas.

The lists of all MQM offices in all the districts of Karachi are being compiled and it would be completed by Monday, informed the official. The KDA officials after completing their action in District East will go to the District Central to demolish the offices of the MQM built on illegal land, he added.



About 200 unit offices and 26 sector offices of the party have been sealed in the city since a crackdown began against the party on Monday night.

Action in Jamshoro

In a first, the zonal office of the MQM in Kotri town of Jamshoro was demolished on Saturday. It was allegedly built over a municipal land on Liaquat Road.

In the security cover of the Rangers and police, Kotri municipal committee’s staff razed the ground floor structure. Jamsoro deputy commissioner Munawar Ali Mahesar told the media that the property belonged to the municipal committee.

Workers remanded

The anti-terrorism courts’ administrative judge remanded on Saturday three female MQM workers in police custody for four days, in a case pertaining to attacking a media house.

The police presented Quratulain, Rabia and Sumera before the administrative judge and submitted that they were involved in an attack on the ARY News office and were apprehended in targeted raids. The investigating officer said that the three women were present at the MQM hunger strike camp outside the Karachi Press Club on Monday, when MQM founder Altaf Hussain chanted anti-Pakistan slogans and spoke against the sovereignty of the state. Hussain also incited his workers to attack media houses, after which workers followed the same and ransacked the ARY News office in Saddar, the investigating officer said, adding that the women were identified with the help of footage of the scene. The judge sent the women in police custody on a four day physical remand and sought a progress report on the next hearing.

Two cases are registered at Artillery Maidan police station against MQM leaders and some 1,500 to 2,000 unidentified people who have been declared absconders in the case.

So far, around 40 workers of the party, including three party leaders have been arrested in this case along with dozens of activists.

With input from our correspondent in Hyderabad

Published in The Express Tribune, August 28^th, 2016.