The Herald
Oct. 1984
By Sadiq Jafri
Sohrab Goth
A press note released by the District Magistrate, East Karachi on Friday, June 15, 1984, said that at 7 a.m. that day “an excise party, assisted by the anti-crime and headquarters police, raided a narcotic den in Sohrab Goth on the superhighway and recovered heroin and arrested two persons. The residents, including women and children, started pelting stones at the raiding party and some of the miscreants opened fire.
A high-powered inquiry body was set up the same day to probe into the incident and submit its report within 15 days.
“Nine excise and police officials, including one lady searcher of the excise department, received injuries. The raiding party also opened fire. As a result of this encounter, two women were killed and seven others received minor injuries.”
Karachi’s Bara might be famous for its “smuggled array of silks, its double georgettes, its varied electrical and consumer items that are sold at rates only slightly lower than those in city markets. But these crystals and georgettes and toasters are used as a cover to hide Sohrab Goth’s real ware — women, narcotics, criminals, and guns.
The report, however, was never made public. And the police, on their part, never repeated the exercise.
Ten days before that encounter, a comparatively peaceful raid was conducted in Sohrab Goth by the same anti-crime squad. Crores of rupees worth of hashish, heroin, and liquor were recovered along with the instruments used in the cutting and packing of narcotics, 17 small-timers were arrested. The owner of the den, Gul Marjan, was reported to be out of the country and his number two man, present at the time of the raid, managed to sneak out through the back door. With him, a number of other important persons also escaped. As for the arrested, they were never challenged.
A hush fell over the whole episode and that prevails to this day. Meanwhile, crime continues to flourish, as before.
Sohrab Goth, an unauthorized settlement on the superhighway, some 20 kilometers from the district courts, has in recent years, emerged as the new gateway to Karachi’s underworld.
On its backside, spread over a vast area, are 500 puccas houses barricaded by high boundary walls and iron gates. This constitutes a residential area for over 25,000 people. On the front side, near the road, is the commercial area popularly known as the Bara Market. Comprising over 2,000 shops, unlike other such temporarily-built markets in cities, this construction looks solid enough to be permanent. Straight, carpeted pavements and concrete shops with iron shutters.
A majority of the residents and shopkeepers appear to be of Afghan origin or Pathans from the tribal belt. That is evident from their turbans and rosy cheeks and their names. For instance, those injured in the June 15 police encounter were identified as Awal Khan, Zarak Khan, Haji Gul, Bibi Wazira, Taj Gohar, Akbar Gul, and Khaista Khan.
On one of my trips to Sohrab Goth, I ran into youngsters ranging in age from 8 to 20 in the open space in front of the market. They gestured towards me with a meaningful glint in their eyes, perhaps seeking a potential drug customer. Heroin, I discovered, sells at Rs 100 a cellophane packet―a quantity sufficient for 50 cigarettes―and hashish at Rs 10 a chocolate. Foreign liquor is also available at Rs 400 to Rs 500 a bottle.
The Bara Market might be famous for its “smuggled” array of silks, its double georgettes, its varied electrical and consumer items that are sold at rates only slightly lower than those in city markets. But these crystals and georgettes and toasters are used as a cover to hide Sohrab Goth’s real ware ― women, narcotics, criminals, and guns.
Recently seven women teachers who went to Bara on a buying spree had a traumatic experience. While shopping, they dispersed into different lanes. When they reassembled at the appointed spot, one of them was missing. When she didn’t return for quite some time, one of the girls informed her relative, a government official. He called in the police. The police found the missing girl in the basement at the back of a Bara shop along with five other girls, all in a state of unconsciousness. The shopkeeper was arrested. Surprisingly, no case was registered against him and, in fact, no record of the incident exists with the police. A similar incident took place with a slightly more powerful government official’s wife. She too was recovered from a similar basement. Once again, no action was taken against the culprits.
Police records show a sharp increase in the number of girls missing over the past years. Apart from those who had left of their own will and were later discovered a majority of them remain unfound. Rumor has it that they are supplied to the local market, the better ones, however, are slipped to the Middle East.
Sohrab Goth doesn’t stock just women; it also stocks the latest in arms and ammunition; any quantity can be bought here but under strict security. Grab hold of a middle-man and he’ll help you buy. A Darra-made pistol or revolver is available for up to Rs 800, while a foreign-made small handgun costs anywhere between Rs 1000 to 1500. A 7mm or a .22 mm foreign rifle can be bought for Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000. The Kalashnikov – a Soviet-made rifle with an automatic magazine that fires 40 rounds at a time ― is more expensive. The price varies from Rs 30,000 to Rs 45,000, according to the gun’s running condition. Hand grenades, time bombs, and rounds of all makes are also available in unlimited supply.
Selig Harrison in an article in the magazine Foreign Policy in April 1982 had alleged that Soviet-made machine guns and Kalashnikovs were being fabricated in Pakistan. One cannot be sure whether the Kalashnikovs Sohrab Goth is offering are genuine replicas but the fact that people are buying them and using them locally is alarming. Guns seem to have become a part of life here. In different police encounters in the last two months in Karachi alone at least five police officers were killed by gun-wielding bandits. The cops with their outdated equipment, looked on helplessly.
Armed dacoities and highway robberies have also registered a sharp increase in the last few years. The increase coincides with a decrease in the number of criminals arrested. The culprits are mostly absconders. And Sohrab Goth is the ideal hiding resort for them. In some ways, it is even better than the northern tribal belt on both sides of the highway that leads to the Pak-Afghan border, right after Jamrud.
For one, unlike the tribal belt, the tiny hideout that Sohrab Goth provides to criminals is not isolated from habitation; it is closer to the urbanized area so that a criminal can maintain a regular “relationship” with the outside world, which is not possible in the tribal belt.
Sohrab Goth is not just a place for shady characters but for shady ventures too. And the most profitable of them all is drug trafficking. The stuff reaches Bara in double-framed trucks especially assembled in Peshawar. They come from Landikotal, where 28 heroin-processing factories operate round the clock. The first factory, hijacked from Iran, was installed in Landikotal around 1970. Later, machinery for the other factories was fabricated locally. Two qualities of heroin – brown and white ― are produced here. The brown one, mainly for local consumption, is available at the Karachi Bara for Rs 15,000 per kilo. The white one, mainly for “export” to Europe and the Far East, is sold here at Rs 100,000 a kilo. The consignments are stored at Sohrab Goth and in posh bungalows owned or rented by the big bosses in well-to-do localities around the city.
The main “export” route is by sea. The stuff is loaded in the basements of ships that take it to Bombay, the “stockiest city.” Since India is not a producer country, a small portion of the stock is sold there too, at double its Pakistani price. The rest is sent to various destinations by road, sea, and air through locally-hired Indian carriers. Stockists in the Far East buy the stuff at 15 times the original price i.e., Rs.1.5 million a kilo. The profit rate is 25 to 30 times higher in Europe―the biggest buyer of the product — where it is purchased for Rs 2.5 to Rs 3 million a kilo.
Why should Bombay be used as the “stockist-transit center,” instead of Karachi today. It is next to impossible to carry the stuff while traveling on a Pakistani passport. At entry points to Europe and the Far East, every passenger with a Pakistani passport has to undergo a thorough check.
However, Pakistanis are an ingenious lot. They always find a way out ― British passports prepared under a P.C. (picture changed) system – at Rs 20,000 a passport. Fake passports are also available―at Rs. 15,000 each.
Local officials choose to keep mum on the whole heroin racket. The police call it propaganda to malign the Afghan refugees and to create a law-and-order situation. A Pakistan Narcotics Control Board official, however, admitted to knowing all that is going on in Sohrab Goth but refused at first, to accept the fact that this kind of organized crime had the blessings of some “big bosses.”
He said the criminals gathered in Sohrab Goth were small-timers who did not operate in an organized manner. “Most of them are either Afghan refugees or our tribal people come down in search of a livelihood. They are prepared to do whatever pays them. They gang up when raids are conducted, but otherwise, they exist in small groups.” However, he subsequently accepted the presence of big invisible hands behind the racket.
“Small peddlers are hired at 50 rupees daily,” he said. “They are arrested pretty often but are freed quickly. They never disclose their bosses’ names because they are sure that help will come. Even if they were to disclose the names, who would believe them. How can such big names be arrested merely on verbal allegations leveled by a nobody, a small drug trafficker? The big snake always recoils into a safer shell.”
So, what can be done?
“This is not our domain,” says this PNCB official. “The excise department has to step in.”
“Don’t blackmail me,” the excise department official barks into the phone when I ask him for his comments.
As for the police, they are either involved in the racket or helpless in the face of a barrage of rounds from Kalashnikovs and the other modern firearms possessed by the Sohrab Goth residents.
So, if Sohrab Goth and the criminal underworld continue to thrive, need anyone wonder?