KARACHI: Omar Shahid Hamid, a police officer who is known for his novels on militancy and crime scenes of Karachi, told the audience at the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) on Saturday evening that although Pakistan had a poor criminal justice system, extrajudicial killing could not be condoned.

“As a police officer in his youth and fighting terrorists and other criminals, it fascinates one but as one grows older, one realises that such encounters cannot be condoned,” said Mr Hamid, a senior superintendent in the counterterrorism department in Sindh.

He was speaking at the launch of his third novel The party worker at the KLF. Indian writer Preeti Shenoy joined him at the programme, moderated by Bilal Tanweer.

Umar Hamid shot to fame with the launch of his debut novel The prisoner which he authored in the backdrop of the 2002 kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. His second novel, The spinner’s tale, published in 2015, was declared the best book at the current KLF event.

The author said he did not come from literary background but took creative writing experimentally. “Writing more fashions my craft and evolves the language,” he said.Preeti Shenoy echoed his thoughts, saying that writing regularly improved a writer’s skill. She said she had written eight books and it turned out that each of her new work was more refined than the previous one.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2017