KARACHI: With their colourful clothes still on, children inside Constable Abdul Razzaq’s home were curiously looking at their elders scurrying in and out of their home in Bilal Colony, adjoining the Korangi Industrial Area. On the morning of the third day of Eid, Thursday, Abdul Razzaq, 49, was targeted on his way to the KIA police station.

More than 100 police personnel have been killed this year. Razzaq leaves a wife and seven children.

Around afternoon, the family were busy packing their belongings and were in a hurry to leave for Faisalabad, where Razzaq will be buried. His son, who was reluctant to give out his name, was overcome with grief as he said he was sleeping when “my uncle informed me that my father had been shot dead near the refinery”. Before getting into a bus, parked adjacent to the crammed street, his son said he did not know why his father was targeted.

Razzaq’s cousin Zahid, living a block away from Razzaq’s home, said their family had many policemen and this was a second death in their family within a year. “He was part of an eight-member crime control force constituted by KIA SHO Saadat Butt to clamp down on the sprawling drug trade in the area. This is what they did to him as a result,” he surmised quietly.

The duty officer, Amjad, who was the first one to know about the incident, said Razzaq received 11 bullet wounds on his body before he was left to die. “Two men riding a Honda 125 shot him at a bend near the National Refinery at 9:20am with .9mm pistols. By 9:30am we got the information that one of our officials had been seriously wounded,” said Amjad, refusing to name the people involved in the shooting.

According to an eyewitness, who requested anonymity, Razzaq fell from his motorbike after being shot by the men on another motorbike.

CCTV footage captures shocking murder of Karachi policeman

“The gunmen shot him six to seven times again to ensure he was dead. They made no attempt to hide their faces even,” said the eyewitness. Visibly shaken by the incident, the man later refused to testify in court when a police officer asked him to do so.

An intelligence officer said there was a wide network of the drug mafia in and around Bilal Colony, which falls under the Korangi Industrial Area police jurisdiction. For the past five years, three groups have spread across the town, under the patronage of Lal Badshah, allegedly backed by a political party. “The entire strip at the back of the KIA police station is under their control. Whoever stands in their way is demoted, removed or killed. These groups are run by three men,” the officer said.

When asked about the much-dreaded presence of the Taliban in the area, the officer said: “We would have known if they had been here. These people [drug peddlers] operate differently.”

KIA SHO Saadat Butt, however, gave a non-committal response on the issue. “We are looking at it from a variety of angles at the moment. We are mostly faced with retaliatory attacks by criminal gangs and Razzaq’s case seems like one of them. But we’re still investigating.” Speaking further, he said: “As seniors we do complain against the rise in killing of police officers. But having said that, I must add, this is the least we can do now.”

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2014