THE Sindh government’s decision to launch what its home minister described as a “massive operation” to eliminate bandits in the katcha areas along the Indus marks an important turn in the province’s fight to reclaim the state’s writ from riverine criminal gangs. The minister vowed to use state force to eliminate the katcha dacoits and their facilitators, and permanently destroy their hideouts. The resolve expressed by him to ruthlessly crush the criminals underscores the provincial leadership’s renewed political will to put an end to heinous crimes such as kidnappings for ransom, highway robberies and murders in the area. This is not the first time the province has launched a police operation against the riverine criminals who have operated in the area for decades with impunity. What distinguishes the current drive — if the Sindh government’s claims are taken at face value — is the apparent realisation by the political authorities that only a large-scale, sustained operation can address the problem.

While Sindh’s decision to equip police personnel assigned to the operation with modern technology and weaponry reflects its resolve, the success of the operation will depend on the law enforcers’ own capacity and training to sustain such an undertaking in a tough area for several months. The threat of katcha bandits is not confined to Sindh. It poses an even greater challenge in southern Punjab, where repeated operations have failed to remove the menace. It is well established that katcha gangs operating in Sindh and Punjab maintain deep links and routinely seek refuge in each other’s areas of influence whenever they come under pressure from the law-enforcement agencies. Past experience also underlines that police operations separately carried out by Sindh and Punjab have not produced the desired results. The lack of coordination between them has allowed criminals to temporarily move to the other province and to return when matters stabilise for them in their respective areas. The minister’s acknowledgement of Punjab’s support in a recent “successful” operation, which cleared a “no-go katcha area” and recovered from Punjab some who had been kidnapped from Sindh, shows how interprovincial cooperation can yield results. Given the cross-provincial nature of the riverine belt it would have been better had the two coordinated more closely and launched simultaneous operations in their jurisdictions to end this shared menace.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2026