Student groups: Campus violence ‘FUUAST’ to unfold, police slow to react

Injured PkSF man discharged, taken to safer place.

KARACHI:

On Thursday, the staff at Liaquat National Hospital started to hope that life would somehow go back to normal two days after the medical complex was turned into a firing range by two student groups. Their optimism was based on the fact that the reason for the violence was finally discharged.

At around 3:30pm on Thursday men carrying pistols and AK-47s in plain sight took Pakhtun Student Federation (PkSF) member Fida Kakar from the hospital. Kakar was brought to LNH on Tuesday with a chest gunshot wound from fighting that broke out at the Federal Urdu University with a rival student group. Kakar is a second-semester MBA student at FUUAST (Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology) and hails from Qila Abdullah, Quetta. He is the morning unit organiser with the PkSF.

According to the PkSF’s Sindh chief Raza Jadoon, they decided to have Kakar discharged and move him to a safer place. “Members of [two rival groups] move in this area and they can attack us easily,” he said. “The [rival party’s] unit office is located near Liaquat National.”

The entourage that arrived to take Kakar home after discharge was made up of at least a dozen men. Some of them were seated in a light blue Corolla while others, at least three if not four, piled on to four motorcycles. Once the patient was safely seated, the group head out via the back gate with their weapons raised. Fearful onlookers moved out of the way, expecting firing but the only sound to be heard was the roaring of the motorcycles. A hospital security guard and an armed police officer stood near by.

Two days earlier

On Tuesday, between 2pm and 2:15pm intense aerial firing broke out on the grounds of the 700-bed hospital. According to hospital staff, who was too frightened to give their names, a group of young men brought an injured student, later identified as Fida Kakar, to be admitted. Despite repeated questioning, the staff insists the men were not provoked in the slightest to warrant the firing and destruction of property. Standard procedure dictates that patients brought in with gunshot wounds are not admitted until the police arrives to take statements.

“They managed to control the premises for nearly two hours, practically paralysing the hospital from working,” said LNH Director for Administration Brigadier (retd) Syed Naseem Ahmed while talking to The Express Tribune. An administration employee was told to call the police but according to Ahmed, they arrived nearly an hour late. New Town SHO Rahim Shah later told The Express Tribune that they “immediately” rushed to the hospital but the violent men had taken off.

The mob began damaging property by firing as well as ransacking the place. An important main suction pipeline was destroyed in addition to five CCTVs. According to Ahmed, the group broke into the main security control room in order to remove and erase security camera footage so they could not be identified. The hospital is still assessing the damage.

For now, the police have promised 24-hour presence inside the hospital. “We requested two round-the-clock police mobiles for patrol, so far one has been provided,” said Ahmed. “We have had people come armed to the hospital before, but never has anything like this happened.”

A member of the staff who spoke on condition of anonymity, as they are not authorised to speak to the media, said that this was a turning point. “Before [this], when the law and order situation in the city was unstable, we would [still] feel safe inside LNH. Now the fear factor ... is there.”

The hospital’s security officer registered FIR No. 240/2011 against unidentified people.

From FUUAST to LNH

Kakar was injured at FUUAST which became another victim on a list of campuses where a turf war had been simmering for days. The PkSF claims that two members, Yasir Khan and Shahab Khan, were kidnapped and tortured two weeks earlier. A litany of complaints follows. The activists from the rival group stopped PkSF members from sitting their exams at Foundation College, burnt their admit cards at Superior Science College, banned their entry at Government College, Asifabad and on June 13 took their activists hostage in Gulshan College when they were sitting their exams. “We rescued them in police mobiles,” said the PkSF’s Jadoon.

“On June 14, they blocked the roads coming from Bait-ul-Mukaram Masjid and Nipa so that we couldn’t get help from the Hassan Square side,” he added, claiming that they opened fire from the buildings near the university. “Due to the presence of the Rangers and police, our boys are alive. They were stranded in the firing for an hour and then we rescued them from Dalmia.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 17^th, 2011.