OMAR Kureishi’s reminiscence being published in his weekly column Home to Pakistan in your magazine are really informative and interesting. As an experienced media man and writer, he has been portraying past events through his writings to which he himself has been a witness to or had been personally involved in.

Many of the events and happenings referred to by him in his writings would surely be helpful in refreshing memories of old people, besides also acquainting younger generation with the life in the year gone by.

However, I would like to refer to Mr Kureishi’s column of March 24, 2002, in which he had narrated an incident involving an American couple who, in his words, was ambushed and killed by decoits while driving from Iran to Pakistan. I am afraid, the facts narrated by him are partially correct!

The said incident did occur during the later half of the fifties when Mr Omar Kureishi was the resident editor of the newspaper, the Times of Karachi after its editor Mr Z.A. Suleri had moved over to Lahore from Karachi. I would like to refresh Mr Kureishi’s memory regarding the incident. As the then Quetta Correspondent of the Times of Karachi, I had covered that incident and also sent to the newspaper its follow-ups.

The purpose of my submissions is certainly not a contradiction of the narration of Mr Kureishi, for whom I have a great regard, but is to put things straight in the light of my knowledge. Mr Kureishi sent me a telegram in which it was stated that according to a foreign news-agency report, three USAID officials, including a lady named Ms Anita Carole, travelling through the Iranian Balochistan had been ambushed and two male members of the party killed by a group of ‘bandits’ headed by Dadshah. The telegram had further stated that the bandits, according to the foreign news agency, were on way to the Pakistan borders along the Mekran district and that I should file a story regarding the incident.

Mr Kureishi has not only described the name of Dadshah, the leader of the decoits gang, in his writeup as one ‘Daud’ but also wrongly mentioned about him having been sighted in Quetta. Dadshah, in fact, remained hiding inside Iranian Balochistan after the incident till his death in an armed encounter with Iranian gendarmerie following a trap, that was laid down by some pro-government tribal sardars of the area during early 1957.

The actual fact as reported by me in the Times of Karachi during that period was arrest of Dadshah’s brother Ahmad Shah along with 20 of his family members including, women and children, while crossing into Pakistan territory near Mand, a border village in the then district of Mekran in Kalat division.

Major Mohammad Afzal, an ex-army officer who was interviewed in a Karachi hotel by Mr Kureishi, as mentioned by him in the writeup, was holding the office of the deputy commissioner of Mekran district when Dadshah’s brother and other family members were arrested while crossing the border. All of them were brought to Quetta and they lodged in jail for sometime before being taken to the Pakistan-Iran border and ‘pushed’ into Iranian territory.

It may also be recalled that a few days after Ahmad Shah had crossed into Pakistan, a Karachi-based UPI correspondent interviewed him at Panjgur or Turbat, and the story was carried by Dawn which subscribed to the news agency.

As far as Dadshah was concerned, he had reportedly been invited on a feast by some tribal sardars in Iranian Balochistan and was surrounded by the Iranian government forces and was killed in the armed encounter.

SHAMSUL HAQ KHAN
Karachi