RAHIM YAR KHAN: More than 40 shops were burnt in a fire at the Lunda Bazaar near the Sadiqabad Railway Station on Friday night.

The Rescue 1122 said the fire erupted in a shop due to a short circuit after a heavy dust storm and it soon engulfed other shops of the market between the Railway Road and the railway track.

According to Rescue 1122 spokesperson Adnan Shabbir, the firefighters with the help of six fire engines extinguished the blaze in an operation that lasted for two hours. The vehicles of a private fertilizer company also participated in it.

Mr Shabbir said there were clothes worth Rs24m in the shops and a loss of only Rs4m had been estimated.

The eyewitnesses said the used clothes market had been established on land of the Pakistan Railways along the southern side of the main track without any proper safety measures. They said it’s eighth or ninth fire incident during the last few years at the market but the railways authorities never paid any attention to the issue.

During the fire on Friday, three liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders also blasted and they could cause heavy casualties on a normal day, however, there was no loss of life as the market was shut due to the Eidul Fitr.

The shopkeepers reportedly pay a chunk of their illegal rent to the PR officials who condone the illegality occupation.

PR spokesperson Hamdaan told this correspondent that a large operation was conducted in April this year to regain possession of the railways land from illegal occupants and some shops were taken over by the railway authorities.

During the month of Ramazan, he added, when a railways team reached there to get possession of its whole land from cloth traders, the district administration stopped the team from taking action.

Mr Hamdaan further told most of the illegal occupants had the political backing, which was another hurdle to the operation. However, the railway authorities would get their land back soon to ensure safety of citizens and security of the railway installations, he claimed.

Deputy Commissioner Dr Khurram Shehzad told Dawn the district administration would soon conduct a large operation at the railways land where Lunda Bazaar was situated and the land grabbers and encroachers would be removed from it.

He said he had given directions to the assistant commissioner Sadiqabad in this regard. However, he denied the claim of railway spokesperson that the district administration had stopped a railway operation during Ramazan.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2021