Karachi is the biggest city of Pakistan and commercial and industrial hub of the country. It is also called revenue engine of the country as it contributes over 70 per cent of the total revenue and taxes to the national exchequer.
But the residents of the city, which contributes 70 per cent of the total revenue generation, and can rightly be called revenue generation engine of Pakistan, feel insecure and helpless, owing to the unprecedented upsurge in crimes, especially street crimes.
A man after earning two to three hundreds rupees at the end of the day following hard labour is not sure whether he would be able to reach home with the hard-eared money meant for his family.
One cannot go out after dusk with a costly mobile phone and cash in certain areas of the city. Mobile snatching, robberies, dacoities especially bank dacoities, cars and motorcycles jacking and theft, housebreaking and other crimes have registered unprecedented surge in recent years.
The government and law enforcement agencies seemed to be unmoved by the plight of the citizens at the hands of street criminals.
Last year, President Musharraf took notice of the situation and flew to Karachi to hold meeting with the officials concerned. Following meetings with the provincial government and LEAs’ officials he directed the agencies’ officials and the then provincial government to take concrete steps to control spiraling surge in street crimes in the metropolis.
But the president’s directives yielded no results. With every passing day, the ratio of crimes, especially street crimes, is rising.
Sources in the police department told weekly Pulse that there are over 200 organised groups of criminals operating in the city. They said there are also some groups that use four to 10 years old children for their criminal activities. These children are mainly used for theft or housebreaking. There are also groups of criminals operating in the city, which have female members.
Sources said all criminal gangs were operating under the cover of some black sheep in police and law enforcement agencies.
Gangsters and group of criminals involved in street crimes operate with such impunity in Karachi that criminals’ gangs from other parts of the country are now moving toward Karachi as they think that they could easily operate here with impunity.
A source in Sindh Police confided to weekly Pulse that recently it was revealed that a group of criminals involved in mobile snatching and other crime had come to the city from Gilgit. When asked why the gang had come to Karachi where people had mobile sets that cost an average of Rs2,000 to Rs3,000 instead of going to some other city including Islamabad, the officer explained that they could operate easily here than in any other part of the country.
He also claimed that some influential people were backing some gangs in the city.
The government constantly claims that law and order situation in the city has been controlled, especially in Karachi, just to attract investors to come to the city and make investments. There have also been cases where a majority of expatriates and foreigners coming to the city from abroad were deprived of their cash and valuables while heading to the hotel or their homes from the Karachi airport.
Sources said dozens of groups operate around the Karachi Airport, who loot foreigners and expatriate Pakistanis.
They said some airport security officials, including police, deployed there and taxi drivers collaborate with the criminals. How can you expect a person, who has been looted on his way to the hotel from the airport to invest and help build the country’s image abroad?
Besides the mobile snatching and other crime, bank robberies are also on the rise in the city.
Official sources said during the last 11 months over Rs100 million were looted from 18 banks in the metropolis. They said during the whole year of 2006 only six bank dacoities were reported.
This shows a shocking 500 per cent increase in bank robberies during the current fiscal.
In face of the unprecedented rise in bank dacoities, which is alarming, the performance of police and law enforcement agencies is highly questionable.
During the last three months 11 bank robberies were reported in the city. But the police miserably failed to apprehend the culprits involved in these cases.
Performance of the police and LEAs can be gauged from the fact that out of the 11 cases police have so far managed to arrest the accused involved in only one incident, while those involved in the remaining 10 cases are still at large.
Just in the month of November, five banks were looted at gunpoint in different areas of the city.
It must be reminded here that during November the country as well as the city remained under emergency rule, with fundamental rights of the citizens suspended and Constitution held in abeyance.
On November 30, more than a dozen armed robbers, two of them dressed in police uniforms, killed three men, including a police constable, before walking off with over Rs5 million from Saudabad branch of Bank Al Habib.
In what could be termed a daredevil heist some 13 to 16 people drove up in three apparently new 1,200-CC cars at 9:30am and parked each vehicle with a 100 feet distance from the next, and two of them entered the bank after killing the security guard deployed outside the branch.
When the policemen deployed nearby area rushed to the scene after being alarmed by the gunshot, they were also sprayed with bullets even before they could fire a single shot at the dacoits. Two cops besides a security guard and bank customer were killed by the dacoits before walking away with over Rs5 million with them.
This dare devil incident depicts the magnitude of the situation and it should serve as an alert for the law-enforcement agencies as well as the government.
In many respects, crime stands out from the ‘normal’ robberies because of the criminals’ modus operandi. In what looked like a piece from a Hollywood thriller, the gangsters, some of them in police uniform, executed their crime with clockwork precision.
Two of the gangsters went inside the bank, shot the security guard in cold blood, fired in the air to terrorise the staff and in that process killed a client. While they did this, other gang members waited in the cars to cover them. Another car had been kept well camouflaged, and the robbers inside it opened fire, killing one of the policemen heading towards the bank after hearing the shots. Finally, they managed to get away with Rs5 million.
Normally, robbers kill on resistance. But here the security guard was murdered for no reason. The use of police uniform, brand new cars and green car plate on one of the vehicles suggest that it was the work of well-trained and motivated men from the politicised underworld.
It is time the LEAs got their priorities right. It would be a pity if they were to focus all their energy on pre-empting violence of a political nature. The state of emergency and the spectre of terrorism have, no doubt, made demands on the security agencies.
But they should not forget that their first duty is to combat crime and give a sense of security to the citizens.
Emergency rule and crime upsurge
Meanwhile, figures compiled by police authorities and the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) suggest a sharp rise in street crimes along with shootouts, bank robberies and killings of security men after the imposition of emergency in the country and resultant suspension of fundamental rights of the citizens.
“Till date more than 35,000 mobile phones had been stolen or snatched at gunpoint since November 3,” said an official, citing figures compiled on the basis of reports gathered from police stations.
Sources said that these figures were obviously higher compared to that of a month earlier or the days between October 3 and November 2. During the month before the emergency rule, a total of 4,588 people were deprived of their mobile phones through theft or snatching that is believed to be the most prevailing activity in street crimes.
Similarly, he said, data also showed a jump in the cases of theft and snatching of cars in the city during the days of emergency. A total of 465 cars were taken away by robbers, compared to 437 vehicles hijacked in the 30 days before the Provisional Constitution Order was issued by President Pervez Musharraf.
A total of 1,045 motorcycles had been stolen or snatched from October 3 to November 2, and the number rose to 1,135 during the next 30 days, the official said.
The month under the emergency rule -- which witnessed the arrest of hundreds of lawyers, journalists and political activists, and police suppressed every attempt to protest against the suspension of the constitution, which forced some 17 judges of the Sindh High Court to go home after they refused to take an oath under the PCO -- registered five bank robberies, in which the robbers hauled away more than Rs22 million.
Besides street crime and bank robberies, land mafia has also been active in the city in recent months.
Groups of armed men have intensified their activities and grabbed lands alongside Super highway, National Highway and other areas of the city. Sources said the groups were being backed by some official of a former ruling party.
The armed members of the group grabbed the plots allotted to citizens on Super Highway forcefully and sell them. Area police also collaborated with the groups in their criminal activities.
