Most people in Karachi city in Pakistan’s Sindh province feel unsafe as the metropolis recorded nearly 45,000 incidents of street crime and looting in the first eight months of 2024, police said on Monday.
The Police Citizen Liaison Committee said that last year, 118 people were killed in incidents of street crime and robbery, while this year the figure is close to 100.
Most people in Karachi feel unsafe as violent crime rates have increased in the metropolitan city of about 20 million, said Bashir Babu, a factory worker who has been the victim of robbery twice.
“Criminals are working with impunity day or night and no one feels safe going out as the fear of robbery looms over you,” Babu claimed.
The proliferation of social media has further increased the atmosphere of anxiety and fear in the city as new videos are uploaded every day in which criminals are caught on busy streets, in restaurants, at traffic lights, outside ATMs, at barber shops, during the day. In broad daylight, valuables are shown being snatched. In mosques.
In such an environment, the people of Karachi are now facing a new crime threat, the “auto-rickshaw gangs”.
Police officer Abid Fazal said, “Auto-rickshaws are an economical and main mode of public transport for many people, but in recent times there have been several cases of looting of valuables and belongings of passengers, including women, while using these rickshaws. Are.”
Fazal said he investigated cases where some criminal gangs were associated with some auto-rickshaw drivers and were working together to rob passengers.
“The modus operandi is that the driver carefully studies his passengers to find out whether they have cash and valuables on them,” he said.
Fazal said the driver uses his phone to either text the drop-off location or give the unsuspecting passenger the impression he is talking to his family and gives all the information about where he is. .
Sumayya Firdous, a bank teller who was robbed of all her belongings while returning home a few days ago, told police that she never suspected that the driver was informing his gang about where she was going.
“As we neared our drop-off location, two men on a motorcycle with guns asked the driver to stop the rickshaw aside and one of them came in and sat with me and calmly took everything. I never suspected that the driver was involved until people gathered there and stopped the driver from leaving, and a police mobile phone arrived later,” she recalls.
It is no surprise, he said, that ineffective policing, growing corruption in the police ranks and the general indifference of the government and police officials in responding to complaints about the law and order situation in Karachi have led citizens to now resort to mob justice. Have motivated for.
A robber was beaten to death as he and two others tried to rob a house in the densely populated Federal B area on Saturday.
Two robbers managed to escape with their lives.
There have also been other incidents of vigilante justice where people have used firearms to kill robbers or beat them to death when one of them is caught.
At least four incidents of mob justice by people angry over robberies have been recorded this month alone.
In one incident, people chased two fleeing men, killing one and injuring the other, before police rescued them.
Dr Humaira Yousaf, an expert on crime and violence who works for the Karachi-based Center for Research and Security, said mob justice is a worrying trend in Karachi.
“When public trust in law enforcement agencies decreases, people become frustrated.”
This year, dozens of police officers and constables were fired or suspended after being linked to criminal gangs involved in street crime.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
