Bori band laash: Rotting reptile found in DHA

Edhi volunteers refused to take it away, DHA staff had to help.

KARACHI:

The city’s police force and rescue services are used to recovering bodies in gunny bags that are dumped in gutters and rubbish-filled lanes. On Saturday, a stench emanated from a gutter in DHA’s Phase VIII where a gunny bag lay. But what emerged from it was not a torture-scarred corpse, but a rotting reptile.

It was hard to say whether it was a crocodile or an alligator, since the condition of the carcass made it hard for law enforcement officials to determine. Police officers at the Darakshan police station estimated that the reptile was dumped near the ground where Sunday Bazaar is held a few days ago, given the stench and the condition of the carcass. The police was alerted to the gunny bag when labourers working at a house under construction complained about the foul smell emerging from a gutter.

“The smell was terrible. It was so bad that one of the constables who went to fetch the bag fainted,” said Khuda Bux, the duty officer at the Darakshan police station.

“It was found in a blue bag, the kind which is used for supplying sugar. I can’t say how large the crocodile really was because the body had decomposed,” Khuda Bux said.

While rescue service volunteers have been known to fight over corpses and the bodies of the injured, Khuda Bux said that Edhi volunteers who reached the site refused to take the reptile’s body away. It was later taken away by the DHA vigilance staff.

No one came forward to claim the reptile and it was unclear how it had ended up in DHA’s Phase VIII. The police suspect that the reptile was a pet in a house in the area.

Khuda Bux had his own theory, given the profile of the area’s residents. “DHA is where the rich live. They have all sorts of addictions, keeping dangerous animals is one of them,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2012.