Safe-havens: Police haul over 100 from I-11 katchi abadis

Claim confiscation of weapons, narcotics, vehicle spare parts.

ISLAMABAD: Heavy contingent of police, accompanied by elite commandoes, hauled over 100 people, including children in an operation from Sector I-11’s katchi abadis on Sunday.

Senior Superintendent of capital police (SSP) Muhammad Rizwan led the search and combing operation that targeted two “Afghan bastis” slums near the Sabzi Mandi (fruit and vegetable market).

Around 400 policemen, 60 police commandoes, two SPs and the Station House Officer of the Sabzi Mandi Police Station took part in the search of the slums in Sector I-11/1 and I-11/4 and arrested 116 people on suspicion of their involvement in criminal activities and seized weapons including submachine guns, Kalashnikovs and pistols.

According to the police, search teams also confiscated narcotics, fake registration plates, spare parts of vehicles and two stolen motorcycles from the area.

Rizwan said the search operation was conducted on intelligence about criminal elements hiding in the katchi abadis. He said the “Afghan registration cards” of the nabbed suspects would be verified and their mobile phone records obtained.  He said the police are investigating if the suspects have any connections with criminal elements including car lifters and robbers.

Raids on the katchi abadis in the capital were on the cards ever since mid-August after Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had hinted that the Islamabad slums might be safe havens for militants.

At a press conference about the foiled Eid-day suicide bombing in Bhara Kahu, Khan had said he did not want to uproot poor slum dwellers but the localities were harbouring “thousands” of “illegal people who are not from Pakistan.” He had said no security agency was aware about the record of these undocumented residents.

On September 16, the minister told the National Assembly that around 100,000 “illegal” foreigners live in slum dwellings in Islamabad and many of them were involved in criminal activities.

The residents of the two I-11 slums denied police’s claim that they are harbouring militants. Some residents said young men who are not old enough to have CNICs were also arrested and paraded in front of news cameras.

The I-11/1 katchi abadi is over three decades old but is not a regularised slum as per the CDA, which means the civic agency considers it an illegal settlement.

The residents, some of whom claim they built their mud houses after making payments to the CDA, mostly work at the vegetable market but it is common knowledge in the area that some slum residents own illegal weapons.

Sunday’s operation also raised concerns among the slum’s residents that they might be evicted in the near future.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 30^th, 2013.