Rickshaw drivers, teenage girls shot in violent aftermath

KARACHI: Shanti was stranded for almost half an hour with her 16-year-old daughter bleeding in her arms because no taxi or rickshaw was willing to stop and take them to a hospital. The hearing-impaired and mute girl, Aisha, was shot when rioters opened indiscriminate fire on a minibus near Punjab Colony following MPA Raza Haider’s assassination on Monday.

“I lost all my senses when my daughter was shot,” Shanti said, standing by her unconscious daughter’s bedside in surgical ward III at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC).

The girl was shot near her spinal cord. Doctors fear that she might not be able to walk properly again.

“My daughter has already been sick for the past two years,” Shanti lamented. “That day I had taken her to Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine, where I spent hours praying for her.”

The attack took place near her house in Punjab Colony while the commuters were getting off the vehicle, she told The Express Tribune. The entire area was plunged into darkness since all streetlights were off. “When the firing started everyone just ran for their lives,” she said. According to her, the attackers were on motorcycles.

JPMC’s surgical ward III was full of people injured in the firing that ensued across the city after the MPA’s death.

Shahid, a disabled man, was also among them. He was shot thrice in different parts and is now fighting for his life. He was shot at Natha Khan, informed Nazir Ahmed, who had brought Shahid to the hospital in critical condition. He had been found crying near his cart. They brought him to the hospital, where his brother called on his cell phone from Sargodha.

Dr Pardeep Khatri, medico legal officer (MLO) at the hospital, said that 15 bodies and 52 injured people had arrived since the rioting started.

“Almost all the people were either killed sitting near or in front of their houses or travelling in buses,” he said, “Many of the victims are cobblers or vendors.”

Similarly, 16 bodies and 27 injured people were brought to Civil Hospital, Karachi. According to Civil hospital’s MLO, the bodies were handed over to relatives.

Those who sustained injuries in the violence have been admitted to different wards and the condition of 10 of these patients is serious.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Sher Khan said that some people shot and injured his brother near Burns Road. “My brother is a rickshaw driver,” he said, “We have no affiliation with any [political] party but we are being targeted because we are Pakhtun.”

The brothers have been living in Karachi for the last 50 years. Khan said his cousin was also killed in Banaras some months ago, when, according to him, some people started killing Pathans in different areas of the city.

Another victim, Mirzaman, was admitted to surgical ward VI. He said that he was a taxi driver and had been standing near Liaquatabad when some people on motorcycles came and started firing. “I was supposed to be taken to Abbasi [Shaheed Hospital], but it is dominated by [a coalition partner in the government] which is why I asked my ambulance driver to take me either to Jinnah or Civil,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2010.