KARACHI: The homeless diabetic heart patient Zakia Bibi, whose touching video about her home’s wrong demolition at Gujjar Nullah and her husband Shahid suffering cardiac arrest during the demolition that went viral on social media last week, suffered heart attack that proved fatal on Friday.

She had said in that video that went viral that both she and her husband were heart patients and she also had diabetes.

And now that their home had been demolished they were living under the open sky with their belongings while running from pillar to post asking for their ‘cheque’.

“My son earns Rs20,000 a month. He cannot afford to rent a place and we are told not to expect any compensation for the next six months. We are old and unwell. We are sleeping under the open sky. Have a heart,” she had urged the government to give them some respite.

Speaking to Dawn, the aged couple’s son Mohammed Zubair said that he was now terribly afraid for his father. “He hasn’t stopped weeping since my mother left us. He hasn’t eaten anything. He is very weak himself and just out of hospital. In fact, he was admitted to hospital due to his delicate heart condition. He only got discharged last night. Then a few hours after he got home, around 2am on Friday morning, my mother complained of chest pain. She said she couldn’t breathe. We were rushing her to hospital when she closed her eyes on the way. She was pronounced dead when we finally reached hospital,” the son said.

Activists call for stopping home demolition of poor to save ‘rich mansions’

Asked if they have been visited by any government officials for condolence after Zakia Bibi’s death, the son said no, no one had come to them from the government.

“We are only being consoled by our neighbours, who are as helpless as we are,” he said.

“My mother was so unwell. She had a heart condition, she had diabetes, she had blood pressure issues due to which she had also had a stroke sometime back and her left foot was not even working. She was surviving on medicine. And yet she along with my old father were made homeless and made to beg for compensation, which has still not come. You think any government official would care to visit us for condolence?” he asked.

Sadly, many of the sympathetic neighbours of the poor couple proceeded to IBA’s J.S. Auditorium after the burial at Zuhr as they had heard that there was a programme under way with Karachi administrator and law adviser to the chief minister Barrister Murtaza Wahab as key speaker.

They patiently waited for the question-answer session to inquire as to why more than two-thirds of the affectees of demolition had not received their first instalment of the mere Rs90,000 compensation. They also wanted to know why the affectees were not being consulted for a demolition plan.

But Barrister Wahab avoided the questions and could not come up with a satisfying answer.

He, however, said earlier during the talk that the government was only obeying court orders.

“There is 250 acres of land in Surjani Town where the Sindh government is committed to building units for the affectees. But it is going to take time,” he had said in his talk.

Not the first death

Meanwhile, Karachi Bachao Tehreek (KBT), a movement to protect the rights of the demolition-affected people around Karachi nullahs, said that they were devastated by the loss of Zakia Bibi.

“As inflation rises, people are literally being robbed off their shelter. Imagine watching your entire life turning into rubble? To be forced out of your home?” Said Khurram Ali, convener of the KBT and general secretary of the Awami Workers Party, Karachi, which is working for rehabilitation of the affectees of Gujjar Nullah.

“This is not the first death or the last for that matter to happen because of the demolitions. There is an emerging health crisis in the affected communities, directly linked to demolitions.

“There are multiple heart patients among the affectees of this anti-poor campaign. What will become of them? The government is signing their death sentence with every new demolition. Just last month, Zakia Bibi and Shahid Bhai’s former next door neighbour Zarina Bibi had passed away in miserable conditions. These are inhuman, in-survivable conditions, and today we lost Zakia Shahid to them,” he added.

#JusticeForZakiaShahid

Through the hashtag #JusticeForZakiaShahid, KBT has made five demands. They want an FIR to be filed against the representatives of KMC, Mazhar Khan and Khalil, who supervised the demolitions and didn’t count all the households living around Gujjar Nullah.

They have demanded immediate rehabilitation to be provided to aged Mr Shahid and his family and all affected persons. They have asked for a committee for a rehabilitation plan that includes affectees to be set up by the government with immediate effect.

They have demanded that the government halt all demolitions till rehabilitation and relief are provided to all affectees. And finally, they want the government to stop over cutting homes of people with less privilege to save the homes of those with power and money.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2021