Mysterious circumstances: 120 huts gutted in fire, dwellers rendered homeless

Officials believe land was deliberately burnt down for encroachers to start construction.

KARACHI: More than 120 huts made of bamboo and reed were gutted in a major fire in Gulshan-i-Iqbal on Tuesday morning in what officials said was an attempt to free up encroached upon land.

The people of the squatter settlement saw their belongings turn to ash. Due to the fire, electricity, TV and phone cables were also destroyed.

The City District Government, Karachi’s (CDGK) Gulshan-i-Iqbal fire station officer Khalid Hassan and fire officer Nisar Khalid told The Express Tribune that they had received a call at 11:31 am and fire tenders reached the scene at 11:34 am. The fire brigade used nine fire engines and two bowsers. “It took three hours to extinguish the blaze.”

According to them, the fire had erupted due to a short circuit.

Meanwhile, CDGK chief fire officer Ehtishamuddin Saleem said it was a huge fire and any delay could resulted in large-scale damage. The entire area is too congested to allow any bowser to enter the area, he informed.

Ghulam Asghar, a driver who is a resident of the settlement, said he and his wife were at work when the fire broke out. “There were only children in the huts and all of them were safe while everything was burnt down,” he said.

Imran Majeed, whose house burnt down, said that at the time of the fire, his little brother, Farhan, and his mother were inside. “We have lost everything.”

The affectees said that some three and a half years ago, there was a similar fire and it had destroyed everything. The Pakistan Army had helped them recoup some of the loss with philanthropists arranging for their food, they said. “We still hope philanthropists and non-governmental organisations would come to our help.”

‘My land’

Two men, Hassan Baloch said his father Hameed Baloch, who had rented out the huts at Rs1,500 each, insisted that the land belonged to them. They claimed that the fire had erupted from a stove being used by children as their parents were at work.

According to government officials, however, the land is divided between blocks 9 and 19 of Gulshan-i-Iqbal and is not owned by the Baloch men. The area of Block 19 is spread over 32 acres and comes under KDA scheme 24. It is owned by Workers Cooperative Housing Society. The area of Block 9 is said to be the property of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board. These two spaces have been illegally occupied by encroachers, who have named it ‘Tayyab Goth’, officials said.

The encroachers will soon install tents on the burnt land with flags of a certain political party and if this happens, the actual cause of the fire would become crystal clear, officials claimed. “The fire was planned to fully occupy the land and start the construction of houses,” one of them said. They also said that the land was already allotted to buyers and the rates for the plot ranged from Rs5 million to Rs7 million.

Meanwhile, the duty officer at the Azizabad police station said that no FIR was registered and no clues were found that could prove the fire was anything but an accident.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2010.