KARACHI: Sindh govt drags feet over probe into May 12 bloodshed
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, May 18: Another victim of the May 12 violence died at a hospital on Friday — raising the death toll to 46 — while the Sindh government remained undecided about constituting an inquiry committee to look into the events that led to bloody gun battles on the roads of the city, particularly Sharea Faisal.
“We have not constituted an inquiry committee about the May 12 mayhem so far,” the adviser to the Sindh Chief Minister, Wasim Akhtar, told Dawn on Friday.
“We are going to hold a meeting one of these days to decide whether an inquiry committee should be set up by the government or if the Sindh High
Court should be requested to institute a judicial probe,” he added.
The latest victim of the May 12 bloodshed, identified as Mohammad Ashraf, was reportedly a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement from Aligarh Qasba in Orangi Town.
According to police record, 17 people died in clashes on Sharea Faisal and the adjoining areas while 15 FIRs were registered against these killings. The record shows 18 people were reportedly injured while eight cases were registered.
However, sources at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre said that 20 people were brought in dead on May 12 and 60 others were injured in violence on Sharea Faisal.
The police record also shows that the cases were registered in police stations of Sharea Faisal, Al-Falah, Model Colony, Saudabad, Airport, Ibrahim Haideri, Quaidabad and Landhi. It says that 22 motorcycles, including one of a policeman, two cars, one Suzuki and one KESC van, were set ablaze and an office of Madadgar was ransacked by miscreants.
A police officer, who requested not to be named, said: “We have registered cases and sent some of them to the investigation wing but we do not have orders to initiate investigation into the cases. So the files are lying idle.”
Shedding light on the May 12 security arrangement, a senior police officer said a security plan was prepared for that day, but, strangely enough, the officials of the investigation wing were made responsible for their respective areas instead of the SHOs concerned.
According to the security plan, most of the town investigation officers were given the task of providing security, which was against the Police Order 2002, the police official said, adding that the operations wing of the police department was given the responsibility of watch and ward duty but not investigation.
Since the promulgation of the Police Order 2002, the watch and ward police can borrow only 20 per cent staff of the investigation wing in special cases.
He said that the idea of deploying investigation officials was that the operations wing had already sensed that untoward incidents that spin out of control and did not want to face subsequent inquiries as they had in the Nishtar Park bomb blast case last year.
As the investigation department was at odds with the operations wing, the investigation officials half-heartedly accepted the operations duty just to save their jobs but failed to control the law and order situation, the official added.
Besides, a senior police officer said: “I was promised provision of 100 policemen under the security plan but was provided only 25. How can I control law and order with only 25 policemen where 100 are required?” he asked.
Similar complaints were also made by other officials who said that the provision of only 25 to 30 per cent strength as against the manpower on paper, the deployment of investigation officials instead of operations wing, and undue political pressures were some of the main factors behind the police department’s failure to control the situation.
