Master Chandio vs The Cantt Board Clifton

Kick-boxing academy shuts down after Clifton cantonment board moves in.

KARACHI: In this city’s fights, Goliath tends to win. Our David here is a kick-boxer minus the slingshot but just as nifty on his feet. He is up against a giant who for the purposes of this story is less warrior and more monolith.

Last week, Master Jamil Chandio, a black belt 5th Dan, closed his K7 Kick-boxing & Boxing Academy after 20 years at the Gizri Mohammedan football ground – on the left as you go to Sunset Boulevard from Punjab Chowrangi. But despite having been a national karate champion six times and won medals from Japan to Canada, this David never really put up a fight.



He was up against the Goliath of the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC), which wants to establish its writ at the ground, long considered part of the Chandio village, which falls in its territorial jurisdiction. Football stands were built during Benazir Bhutto’s first tenure in 1988.

Chandio maintains that DHA vigilance teams started coming to K7 from December 5 to verbally issue them notice to hand over the keys. Several meetings to persuade them to let him stay didn’t work out, he says.

Only the K7 appears to have been asked to leave and not the footballers or cricket association. Hameed Chandio, the president of the Gizri Mohammedan Football club, (who also happens to be the Pakistan Peoples Party’s president for ward No. 7), said that while they had not received any notice, they also felt that they would be asked to leave. The cricket association, run by Niazis, has not received notice either.

For its part, the CBC provides a different version and says it hasn’t asked anyone to leave. CBC CEO Adil Rafi Siddiqui says he held meetings with Chandio, who also happens to be on their sports committee. Chandio even met the CBC president, the station commander, once.

In the end though, Chandio, 43, handed the K7 keys to the football association. “I wish I could continue to do this till my last breath,” he said. He was so depressed he even thought of making a bonfire of his equipment - but good sense prevailed.



The CBC says that the ground was being used for  drugs and locals were charging up to Rs10,000 to put up wedding tents. “Some of the locals … were creating a monopoly of sorts,” said CEO Siddiqui. “They were also giving people the message that they were calling the shots.”

The CBC insists that apprehensions would be allayed once their relationship is defined. “They can ask for clarity on their future status,” the CEO said, adding that they just need to specify what they want their timings to be. The CBC would also continue to allow community activities and would, for instance, only charge Rs500 for weddings. It would provide exercise mats and any other equipment and sheds, or even indoor facilities. “The point is not that we displace anyone,” said CEO Siddiqui. “The point is only to regulate things.”

But the CBC ostensibly wants to give the DHA vigilance team the space beneath the bleachers.

The problem is that the K7 academy doesn’t have any documents like a lease to lay a claim to this space. On one hand this proves that their use of the space was legally informal but as has been seen in the case of Karachi’s goths or villages, this tends to happen with such old pre-Partition settlements.

The CBC denies it has plans to use the lucrative space commercially. The CEO says that it was an amenity plot and cannot be used for any other purpose “even if it offers good opportunities”. They board might, however, consider a public-private partnership to develop a sports-community facility after meeting legal formalities.



It is not clear why no agreement was reached on using the space and what spooked Chandio to leave an academy he had run for 20 years. The CBC’s assertion that more of its control will act as a deterrent to drug use or misuse of the ground doesn’t quite persuade. The world over, spaces for young men such as the kick-boxing academy in a football ground automatically act as a buffer for neighbourhood vice. And DHA vigilance could have simultaneously maintained patrols without allegedly asking anyone to leave.

Biblical allegories generally aren’t well suited to tell Karachi stories – not just because it is hard to distinguish between absolute Good and Evil in this city but because, as Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book ‘David and Goliath’: “Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2014.