Muggers on the loose in city
CCTV footage shows an elderly man drive a bike while his accomplice snatches cash and valuables from the passengers in a car. Photo: Express
Street criminals continue to loot with impunity less than two weeks after the city police chief, Javed Alam Odho, announced the deployment of Shaheen Force to fight street crimes in the metropolitan city.
Citizens say they have not seen the motorcycle-mounted Shaheen Force patrolling in any locality of the city.
On average, as many as 2,500 mobile phones are snatched every month in Karachi, while sometimes the numbers go up to 4,000, according to official figures.
Earlier only young men were involved in street crimes, but now elderly men appear to also have joined them in looting citizen. This was revealed in the CCTV footage of recent snatching incidents in different areas of the city which have gone viral on social media.
In one incident, an elderly man on motorcycle with a young man riding pillion snatched a cell-phone from a citizen in Pir Elahi Baksh Colony.
The CCTV footage shows a man sitting in a street and speaking to someone on his mobile phone. A motorcycle pulls over near him. A young man gets down and walks towards him, while an elderly man remains seated on the bike. The young man snatches his mobile phone at gunpoint, rushes back to the motorcycle and both escape.
The faces of the two suspects are clearly visible in the CCTV footage and they are easily identifiable. However, police have so far failed to find any clue to the suspects involved in this broad daylight snatching.
Meanwhile in another incident, muggers looted a supermarket and the shoppers inside it in Federal B Area at 7pm on Tuesday and easily made their escape. The incident was caught on the CCTV cameras.
The footage shows two suspected robbers dressed in shalwar-qameez enter the supermarket. One of them stands guard at the entrance, while the other starts looting money from the cash counter. His accomplice tells him something and he starts snatching mobile phones and cash from the shoppers present inside.
They continue looting without any fear before exiting the supermarket. Before leaving, they threaten the supermarket employees and shoppers to stay inside. They are easily identifiable as their faces are clearly visible in the CCTV footage.
In yet another brazen act of street crime, three suspects on as man bikes set up a picket by standing at the corner of a lane in Samanabad area of the city robbing ever one coming out on to the main road from the neighbourhood.
The CCTV footage of the incident was alsodoing rounds on the social media. The fearlessness of the perpetrators indicates that they were unafraid of law enforcers.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 22nd, 2022.