Now that one of Karachi’s most notorious gangsters, Abdur Rehman Baloch more popularly known as Rehman ‘Dakait’ has been killed in what the police term to be an ‘encounter’, many are still pensive as to what will happen next with regard to the law and order and political situation in Lyari.
Though the police authorities maintain that it was an encounter that the wanted man, along with three of his friends were killed, the public reaction in Lyari was not only unexpected, it has also led the common man to question the authenticity of the police encounter, and the injustice of it. In the meantime the four families have sent a letter of protest to the Chief Justice against what they call the ‘illegal’ move.
Lyari is one of the oldest localities of Karachi, comprising a diverse population of Baloch people, along with Makranis, and Sindhis. Because of the confined spaces, and the high level of poverty in the area, along with lack of development, the area has always been prone to crime infestation. Though drug businesses and gangsters have prevailed since even before the 1960s, it was much later (1990s) that it was termed a ‘no-go area’ for the common man, because of the constant gang wars in the area, between the two leading groups, led by Rehman ‘Dakait’ and Arshad Pappu. While it is said that Rehman received his ‘training’ from Pappu’s father, the two separated for personal reasons, lapsing into one bloody feud after the other.
There is no doubt that cross firing and the gang war in Lyari had become a menace with bullets being sprayed any time and any place. While the gang war was going on, I had spoken to a school teacher who drew attention to the level of spontaneity of the situation.
“These people (gangsters) can begin to fire across a busy street in broad daylight,” Hussain Shah* had said who is the principal of a boys’ secondary school in Chakiwara area. Showing some steel cupboards in the corner of the room, he pointed out the bullet marks from firing.
“They won’t care whether there are children around, or whether they are damaging public property. They just want to kill their men and don’t care who they get in the middle.”
Hussain’s view on the situation in Lyari was not a lone perception. The number of people that came to Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK), bleeding to death, or injured by weapons of all kinds, varying from pistols, to Klashnikov’s, and sometimes even rocket launchers, was disturbing. They occasionally aired opinions about the fact that they did not care whether it was Pappu’s men or ‘Dakait’s men who had begun to fire, but they begged for peace in their everyday lives. In fact the gang war has till present claimed over 2000 lives.
The scenario only calmed down after ‘Dakait’ and Ghaffar Zikri, Pappu’s main operational man in Lyari, shook hands with each other in a ‘dialogue of peace’, when the gang war abruptly cooled down. Zikri, who had been controlling the affairs of the gang after the main gang leaders Arshad Pappu and his father Haji Lalu were sent to jail, gave the consent, to collaboration with ‘Dakait’ without the consent of his leaders after he was pressured by the people of his area. The dialogue resulted in allowing the public to visit the areas of Lyari without worrying which gangster the locality fell under.
The anti-climax lies in the fact that Rehman ‘Dakait’s killing has in fact spiraled a new series of protests by the public in Lyari. They have been incensed, outraged and furious at what they term an extra judicial killing within police custody of Rehman ‘Dakait’ along with three others, namely Nazeer Balah, Wajah Aqueel Ahmed and Baba Aurungzeb.
While SP Chaudhry Aslam the man who led the ‘encounter’, argues that it was not a fake encounter, the questions in the minds of both the relatives of the deceased and even those who are not related still linger in the air.
“How is it that the four men, who they called gangsters, died within three meters of firing, almost point blank range, while the police team was left without a scratch?” demands the eldest widow of Rehman called Farzana, whose son Kabeer will be the successor to Rehman’s businesses, and political life, it is said. “There are three men responsible for the murder of my husband,” she claims, without any fear of taking any names. “Nabeel Gabol, SP Chaudhry Aslam, and Asif Zardari, and if any of these people are let alone in Lyari, only the women here will tear them to shreds!” she growls in her heavy voice.
The room is filled with other women from the neighbourhood, who curse in Balochi at the mere mention of SP Aslam.
“I went to meet that man (SP Aslam) today at his house in Defence,” says Shaheen Baloch*, a cousin of one of the deceased, Baba Aurungzeb, who was the President of the Sindh and Balochistan Transport Owners Association. “When I said to him up front that you took Rs8crore after which you killed the four men, he answered back smugly that he had taken even more, and there was nothing I could do about it. Then he just very rudely made remarks against my ethnicity.”
When contacted, SP Chaudry Aslam, answered questions very shortly, simply concluding that, “an encounter held at a distance of 3 meters was a very valid encounter”, and that the “case had been closed”.
“Post mortems have technicalities that journalists won’t understand,” he said. “And I don’t care about the rest of what they say about me.”
Meanwhile, Dr Abdul Jabbar Memon, the Medico-Legal officer (MLO) present on duty at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) when the four bodies were brought in, confirmed with me that after the post mortem it appears that the bullets were in all probability fired from a distance of three meters, but he says that the postmortem report cannot be accessed by anyone. “The Government has sealed the report.” No reason was given for this. Dr Jabbar has also denied that there were other marks on the body. But what the sisters of Baba Aurungzeb, claim goes against the statement of the MLO and the police.
“Despite the fact that my brother did not have a criminal record, we discovered later that he was tortured to death.” Says Saira*, Aurungzeb’s sister.
In a picture of Baba Aurungzeb’s corpse, it shows that there are clear pressure marks around his neck, which may have been because of a cord. Other than that there is only one bullet mark on his shoulder and, the family says, there was only another bullet that had hit his leg. “He cannot have been killed by those two bullets. We want to know what he died of.”
All families have also complained that they did not receive the post mortem report and that the bodies were also handed over to them after much difficulty. In fact, they say, they were not even allowed to see the bodies in the hospital mortuary.
Saira shows her house, pointing at the places where the house is falling. The paint has been peeling off leaving only the cement and the metal rods underneath. The walls are also tattered, and the house, it seems has not been painted since it was built back in 1945.
“They are saying that he was an accomplice of Rehman Dakait,” says Saira. “If he was an accomplice, and a gangster, how is our house in this shape? And as for Rehman ‘bhai’, he was the only one who did anything for us.”
Abdur Rehman Rind* a member of the Lyari Peace Committee, that Rehman Baloch had set up during his last six months, also voices the same opinion. “Rehman may have been condemned as a corrupt man, but then how many of our so-called leaders, the ones who are elected, are not? They are corrupt and robbers to the core. Not only that, they are not even true to the people who have elected them from their vote banks. Rehman built roads, schools, parks and madrassahs for children out of his own money. He even built a small clinic and was planning on a lot more. And once he called for peace in Lyari, no one dared to even fire at a wedding, otherwise Khan bhai would deal with them.”
For a man known as Rehman Dakait in the media, the words ‘Khan Bhai’, which was a title given to him, are seen spray painted all over the walls of Lyari. One of his schools is still under construction, while some burqa-clad women are seen reading books at a library that he named after his father Sardar Dad Baloch (‘Dadal’). A tuition centre lies adjacent to the library, free, and a youth centre is being built too.
“He also started a group of students who used to do cultural programs in not only Lyari but other Sindhi and Baloch areas of Karachi,” says Rind. “This was called Bijjaar or identity.”
A lane behind one of Rehman’s houses in Rexar Lane is a park popularly called Mujahid Park, where Babu Dakait, a gangster in the 80s used to torture his victims who would not pay up for his extortion. Throughout the years this park has remained locked, its mystery intriguing many. Today it has been opened up for the children of Lyari, and a foundation stone reveals that MNA Nabeel Gabol and MPA Rafeeq Engineer of the PPP were present on the inauguration of this park with Sardar Abdur Rehman Baloch. What more evidence is there to suggest that these PPP candidates for their Lyari vote bank knew and had allied with Rehman? If he was a wanted man now, he was a wanted man when this park was inaugurated too. Then why was Rehman ‘Dakait’ killed?
Shah Baloch* another close friend of Rehman names three possible beneficiaries of the death of Rehman Baloch.
“One is the MQM, who wanted to take over the area, and who are on the other hand patronizing the group under Arshad Pappu, so that he may take over now, and under gun point get the MQM to win. The other is the military element which saw Rehman as a threat of joining forces with any Baloch nationalist party and causing problems. But the most immediate and the strongest motive was for the PPP, who saw Rehman as taking over the entire Lyari sector politically and also saw that he had become very popular which meant a threat to them.”
In fact, Shah says that the clashes called ‘gang-war’ by the media was in fact only a Baloch tribal fight, a very common concept in the Baloch culture, was the reason why there had been so much violence in Lyari.
“The question is,” cuts in a man living in the same locality as Rehman, “why did the police not do anything in Lyari when there was so much violence? They used to be scared to come here. All the politicians were scared of entering Lyari, but right at the time when Rehman changed the situation and made peace committees, they killed him.”
While news reports stated that SP Investigations, East Zone, Chaudhry Aslam, had received a tip-off that Rehman Dakait, was present at the Link Road in Steel Town, Shah* counters this saying there was foul play. “We think that the police lured Rehman to a certain spot, which I do not think was the Steel Town Link Road. Rehman was not with his usual armed guards and did not have much to protect himself,” he says. “The police probably made a deal with him, like they had made a deal in the Quetta arrest before, and Rehman came to them, thinking he would be let go, but he really did not suspect that he would be killed. After all three meters is almost point blank,” Shah says.
He then repeats what other people have said about the death of Rehman Dakait.
“If Rehman was a wanted man, a suspected criminal, there should have been a trial against him, so that everyone knew. Every man, innocent or guilty deserves a court trial not death.”
The public in Lyari has also sworn to boycott the elections this time.
“We will see who dares to even come here and try to get our vote, whether it is the PPP or the MQM. We’ll tear them apart,” says a woman. “They have never done anything for us, and they have snatched away the only hope we had.”
But though the public curses the MQM for trying to do away with Rehman, Nadia Gabol, the MPA for MQM from Lyari, condemns the killing herself. “I live two minutes away from Rehman Baloch, and I have never had any problem from him, even though he supported the PPP. And let me make this clear, if the Nabeel Gabol and Rafiq Engineer had not been supported by Rehman Baloch, they would never have won the seats.”
Nadia Gabol, who is ironically the niece of Nabeel Gabol himself, says that no matter what anyone says, Lyari was definitely ‘picking up’. “There was no firing at weddings, there was an abrupt drop in boys doing drugs in the lanes, there was 600 gallons of water being supplied to Lyari in one day. The roads were in a better condition, the man (Rehman Baloch) gave away ration during Ramzan. As far as his death is concerned, it was a shock to the people. I am sure he had it coming, but the way it came his way, was unfair. Every one, innocent or guilty, deserves a fair trial. And MQM did not have anything to do with his death.”
Meanwhile, several attempts were made to contact Nabeel Gabol and Rafiq Engineer, but they remained out of reach. The same complaint was given by the public in Lyari and the members of Rehman’s Peace Committee, who said their phones were switched off since Rehman had been killed. Nadia Gabol verified that these complaints had certainly come to her too from certain quarters.
Today, though Lyari’s reaction to Rehman’s death has been unnaturally controlled and quiet, in spite of some aerial firing at his funeral, and the protest the families held at the Karachi Press Club, the general public in Lyari remembers him as a Robin Hood figure more, rather than a petty criminal.
“He was the only one who did anything for us,” cries an old man. “Each Ramzan he gave out food for us poor people. Now will the political parties promise to do what they have never done before?” he questions.
Originally published in The News on Sunday
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