Six months since Perween Rehman, the director of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) was killed in Karachi, the police have not made serious efforts to investigate the murder. PHOTO: FILE
ISLAMABAD:
The Supreme Court will take up a human rights petition related to the brutal murder of a well-known social worker for preliminary hearing on Thursday.
Six months since Perween Rehman, the director of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) was killed in Karachi, the police have not made serious efforts to investigate the murder. A charge-sheet has yet to be submitted in court.
An appeal on the maintainability of the case will be heard on Thursday. The petition has been filed by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and citizens of Karachi. Among the petitioners are rights activist Zohra Yousaf and journalist Zubaida Mustafa. The Sindh and federal governments and the provincial police have been cited as respondents.
The petition represents a humanitarian initiative to draw attention to justice denied to a person who dedicated three decades of her life to redress grievances of the poor in the face of land grabbers. On the eve of the hearing, Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Centre Director Fayyaz Baqir said, “Her killers, those who pulled the trigger and those who ordered it, remain at large. No one is there to guard those who dedicate their lives to public service.”
On March 13, while Rehman was going home, unidentified assailants fired at her on Main Manghopir Road, as a result of which she received bullet injuries in the neck. She was rushed to hospital where she died.
Rehman compiled land records of villages on the fringes of Karachi which were vanishing into the city’s vastness because of ever-increasing demand from thousands of families migrating from across the country.
According to Rehman, around 1,500 villages were forcibly merged into the city by land grabbers over the past 15 years. The land was subdivided into plots, which were sold for billions of rupees. She had also documented land in Orangi Town to protect the slum from the city’s notorious land grabbers.
According to her colleagues, she had been receiving death threats from land grabbers. In one of her interviews, conducted in 2011, she had stated in detail the nature of land grabbing activities in Karachi and the threats received by her and her colleagues.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2013.
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