No longer damsels in distress, women add their names to the most-wanted list

Most complaints of women robbing houses are from Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Nazimabad.

KARACHI: Bonnie and Clyde - the infamous Texan couple who are known to have robbed around a dozen banks - may have been from the 1930s but Karachi is still coming to terms with crimes where the woman holds the gun. 

Saqib Farooqui at Live DVD, located in the commercial area in DHA’s Phase 2 Extension, had a run-in with one such couple, who according to him, did not “fit the criminal profile.”

“A young and well educated woman walked into the DVD store one afternoon,” said Farooqui, recalling the incident which took place last month. “After browsing through the films, she asked to see the DVD player which was for sale. She asked the rate and then asked if she could call home.”

The woman pulled out a cell phone and made the call, narrating the price to whomever was on the line. Soon after, a young man - also described as being well-dressed and educated - walked into the store with a gun.

“The girl put the phone back into her handbag and pulled out a 9mm gun. The guy pushed me over and punched me in the back twice. Then they asked me to take out the cash, my cell phone and the DVD player.”

Having netted about Rs8,000 within minutes, the  duo calmly walked out but the bizarre tale has the neighbourhood gossiping about the new breed of robbers. “When you’ve been in the business a while, you can tell who is a robber and who isn’t. But these people did not look anything like robbers,” Farooqui said incredulously.

The store’s management opted not to register a complaint with the police since the amount was minimal. And this wasn’t their first experience - in the three and a half years that the DVD store has been in business, it has been robbed four times. “There’s a police mobile parked at the corner while these robberies take place under their patronage.”

According to ASI Yaqoob at the Defence police station, there is “information about a girl and a guy” but the station has received no complaints in writing yet. “We can only take action if there has been a written complaint.”

ASI Yaqoob added that there was one report of a man using a burqa-clad woman as cover for the robbery, but there have been no specific reports. There has been an increase in women involved in crimes, especially house robberies. “There aren’t that many complaints from Defence [about women robbing houses] but this is happening a lot in Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Nazimabad.”

According to Farooqui, the robbers weren’t just polite, but seemed to be also having fun. “This street has become very dangerous. Earlier, the robbers looked Seraiki or from Hazara but these two seemed from around the neighbourhood!”

There goes the neighbourhood

Mohammad Farhan and his brothers run the store next door - Pasha Computers - it was robbed last Ramazan by two men pretending to be customers and looking for naat CDs. “When we told him that we don’t sell them, he asked for a blank one to record the naats himself,” Farhan told The Express Tribune. But then he took out a gun and proceeded to rob the place. Farhan says the robbers didn’t appear to know the value of the products, but they still made away with a customer’s laptop and speakers, as well his brother’s cell phone and wallet. Pasha Computers lost products worth Rs45,000 that afternoon. Another customer, who entered the store while the crime was in progress, was robbed of Rs10,000. The Defence police wouldn’t register a FIR, he says, but recorded their complaint as well as of the customer who got robbed.

Held at gunpoint to fix router

This Ramazan, however, one of Farhan’s brothers - who has been robbed eight times and says even the sight of a gun doesn’t scare him anymore - had to deal with a gun shoved in his face, not for money but to fix a router. “When my brother declined to visit his house and fix it, the customer cursed the shop owner and put a gun to his face, saying ‘today is my fast, otherwise I would have shot you in such a place that even your corpse wouldn’t be found’.”

Farhan’s brother reported the threat to the police, who when they found out that the customer was the ‘son of an MNA from Balochistan’, turned on the shopkeepers.

It is a rarity to find a shop in the commercial area that hasn’t had visits from gun-toting robbers - from an Al Falah bank branch to a homeopathic clinic and a hair salon. The brothers are winding up Pasha Computers from the commercial area, given the increase in crime in the neighbourhood, saying “There’s no peace of mind.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2012.