‘Karachi is a volcano - once it erupts the govt won’t be able to do anything’

As long as licences are handed out for prohibited and non-prohibited bore weapons, the crime rate will be impossible.

KARACHI: Karachi has turned into a “volcano”, which could erupt at any moment because pistols, revolvers, rocket launchers, machine guns are so readily available, said the Supreme Court in its orders for the suo motu case on the city’s violence.

These guns are of prohibited and non-prohibited bores, are licensed and illegal. If the volcano erupts, the government will not be able to control the violence, the SC said.

During the hearings, the inspector general of police had conceded that for the last 10 to 15 years, half a million arms licences were issued by the home department. But with the help of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), they are verifying them.

Federal minister Rehman Malik had announced that they would stop issuing manual arms licences and that NADRA would issue computerised ones by August 31. But the deadline was moved to October 31. According to NADRA, the date was extended because of the flooding in Sindh and the dengue epidemic in the Punjab.

The SC has directed that Karachi must be “cleansed of all kinds of weapons under the existing law or by promulgating a new legislation”.

Criminal lawyer Shaukat Hayat supported the SC’s call for tougher new gun laws with harsher sentences and fines, the confiscation of property gained from smuggling arms and even the confiscation of vehicles which brought them to Karachi.

Hayat argued that all licences shall be cancelled and after scrutiny only people who genuinely needed them should be issued new ones. This needs to be done because a large number of licences have expired and many people have fake ones as well.

Hayat also felt that the Arms Ordinance of 1965 needs to be revisited and tweaked as giving any and everyone a license was a great mistake. Only law enforcers should have prohibited-bore arms. Right now, the problem is that the criminals have more sophisticated weapons than the police.

As Karachi does not make arms, they are either imported or smuggled in and arms dealers are also playing a part in this dirty business, the lawyer said.

During the hearings, the chief of police had said that in the past, truck-loads of arms and ammunition used to be unloaded before police stations but the police did not dare do anything.

For its part, the court noted that there are different voices that feel that the government should have started working on deweaponising Karachi. In fact, a private bill was moved by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in the National Assembly, but it is still pending.

During the hearings, the federal government’s lawyer, Dr Babar Awan, was asked to explain how many licences were issued by Islamabad and in Sindh over the last five years. The number submitted was 180,956 licences for non-prohibited bores issued by the Sindh home department and 46,114 licences for prohibited bore arms. The largest number was 1.2 million for licences of non-prohibited bore weapons, issued by the federal ministry of interior.

Another home department official, Additional Secretary Home Department Muhammad Riazuddin, expanded on what the court meant when it said: “All licensed arms genuinely required for security concerns and personal safety may be retained but they must also be registered with NADRA.”

According to Riaz, since last year, the home department has already been working on a programme to computerise the arms licence issuance process and for the past couple of month registration with Nadra was also being undertaken. “The court has now explicitly said that all other licences not registered with Nadra should be cancelled, which is something we are already doing,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2011.