Dr. Syed Asad Bokhari’s 12-year-old son witnessed his father’s murder on June 16 this year.  It was almost closing time that day when a man strode into Dr. Bokhari’s clinic in Saeedabad, Karachi, and fired several shots at him with a pistol, killing the doctor on the spot.  The assailant escaped with his accomplice on a motorbike.  Also present at the scene was a patient who was injured in the firing, as well as the compounder. 

            Dr. Bokhari, 40, had five children between the ages of two and 15 years.  Among his dependents were a widowed sister who has a son and a mentally handicapped daughter.  Another sister weeps as she relates, “Our parents died several years ago and my brother was our family’s pillar of strength.  He had visited me just the night before – I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

            The father of another doctor, 39-year-old Dr. Mohammed Ali, who was murdered in his Saddar clinic on December 13, ’94, breaks down when he recalls that fateful day.  “It was late evening when the compounder saw a man with a blanket draped over his head and shoulders walk into my son’s room.  When he heard gunshots, he first thought that something had broken.  The next moment, the stranger dashed out of the clinic and fled with another man waiting outside in a car.  My son was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.” 

            Dr. Mohammed Ali’s father supports his son’s widow and four children with his income from a plastic goods store on Tariq Road.  He says that three days before the murder, his son had reported his car being followed.  Despite his family’s misgivings however, Dr. Mohammed Ali continued to visit his clinic and paid with his life.

            In one of the bylanes in Soldier Bazaar, the steel doors of Dr. Raza Pirani’s clinic are locked and the windows boarded up.  Dr. Pirani was murdered outside the clinic on June 26 this year just as he was about to leave for home.  Recalls a worker at an adjacent maintenance shop, “The doctor had been practicing here since 12 years and he was very popular, receiving more than 60 patients a day.  There is great sadness at his death.  The Hindus living in Bhangi Para nearby are particularly bereft because many of them used to seek treatment from him.”  Dr. Pirani, 40, was the only brother of four sisters.  His wife, who is also a doctor, is reportedly expecting their fourth child.

            The cases mentioned above are among those of approximately 70 doctors which the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) says have been assassinated in Karachi over the past 10 years.  The frequency of the killings has shown a disturbing increase.  Last year six doctors were murdered, while the year 2001 has already claimed seven victims, four between May 31 to July 8 alone.  According to Aftab Nabi, Inspector General Sindh Police, the murders were earlier ethnic in nature, but they have, since July 2000 to the present, taken on a distinctly sectarian dimension. 

 The Tehrik-e-Jaffaria Pakistan (TJP) Sindh President, Allama Hasan Turabi, places the number of  doctors murdered in Karachi since the early ’90s at 69, of which he says 60 were Shia while the rest were targetted because they bore names that are common among the Shia community.  To support his contention, he cites the names of Dr. Aal-e-Hasan, his son Dr. Mohtashim, Dr. Abbas and Dr. Ishrat Hussain, who were among the Sunni doctors killed over the past few years.  Allama Turabi adds that some days before his death, Dr. Ishrat Hussain received a phone call directing him to drop “Hussain” from his name.  He refused to comply.

            Dr. Habib Soomro, general secretary of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), concurs with Allama Turabi’s view, although the PMA in its official stand has downplayed the sectarian aspect of the killings.  Attesting to the fact that doctors in Karachi, particularly those belonging to the Shia sect, live in the shadow of fear, he cites the example of Dr. Shabbir Nawaz, whose Landhi clinic has been in existence for 20 years.  “Dr. Shabbir, whose family also has agricultural holdings in the area, has been receiving threats for some time over his perceived ‘Iranian’ origins, as a result of which he has sent his wife and children to live in London.  Meanwhile, he moves around accompanied by two guards provided by the commissioner of Karachi.”

            Incidentally, 600 constables in the Sindh police are deputed for the protection of various individuals deemed at risk for terrorist attacks.

            Dr. Tipu Sultan, President PMA Karachi, says, “Doctors are easy targets because they have a predictable routine and also when a doctor is killed, it creates depression among the public.  Moreover, 70 per cent of the murdered doctors were general practitioners.  It’s easy to walk into a GP’s clinic and shoot him.  Specialists are not so easily accessible.”  However, it is well-known that prominent urologist Dr. Adeeb Rizvi has long been on the terrorists’ hit list.

            There are several instances of doctors winding up their practice and settling abroad for fear of being assassinated.  Dr. Soomro mentions the case of Dr. Hasan Habib, ENT surgeon at the Civil Hospital, who left with his family for Canada last month after receiving death threats.  Dr. Habib was so apprehensive that he informed his colleagues of his impending departure from the airport, minutes before boarding his flight. 

      The families of doctors who have fallen victim to assassins’ bullets continue to live in fear of reprisal if they pursue the case.  Many, including Dr. Pirani’s family, have shifted to other localities where they hope to remain untraceable.  The TJP has been requested by several families of slain Shias to desist from sending financial assistance through its representatives and instead deposit the money into bank accounts opened for the purpose.  Witnesses to the murders balk at identifying the culprits.  In the case of Dr. Pirani’s murder for instance, which was committed by two unmasked men in broad daylight outside the victim’s clinic in a narrow Soldier Bazaar lane bustling with hawkers and small shops, not one person can recall the faces of the killers.  Even the drivers seated in the taxis routinely parked opposite the clinic deny having taken a clear look at the men. 

            Informed sources allege that the virulently anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), or more specifically, its militant wing, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), is involved in many of the doctors’ murders.  In most of the cases since 1999, where arrests have been made, police records describe the accused as belonging to the SSP. 

According to Allama Turabi, even other Sunni sectarian parties do not deny SSP’s culpability in sectarian murders.  Says he, “We are on good terms with both Deobandi and Barelvi ulema.  In our private conversations, they denounce the SSP and those who kill Shias, but they maintain that if they condemn them publicly, they will become the SSP’s targets.”  He adds that Ashraf Ali Thanvi, a Deobandi cleric, recently told him that because of the SSP, his family has discarded its tradition of naming boys Ali or Hasan.

For his part, SSP leader Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Nadeem denies his party’s hand in the killings, maintaining that the LJ comprises those elements who have been expelled by the SSP and that “the SSP is a law-abiding party.”  Sources within the police however, maintain that there is a symbiotic connection between the LJ and the SSP.

According to statistics compiled by the Sindh police, 39 doctors were murdered since 1995.  Sixteen of the victims were Shia and 17 Sunni.  The sectarian affiliation of the remaining six victims is not specified in the records.  Of significance however, is the fact that while the motives for killings before mid-2000 are listed under various heads such as terrorism, personal enmity, robbery etc., those after this date are almost invariably defined as sectarian.

            Allama Turabi believes that the increase in sectarian murders on the whole, including that of Shia doctors, is a consequence of the fact that the arrests made in various cases touch only the tip of the iceberg while the terrorists’ networks are left untouched.  He cites the instance of the two SSP activists arrested for the murder of DSP Syed Sadiq Shah and his son.  During interrogation, the accused admitted that they were responsible for the murder of 30 Shias.  “Despite this,” he says, “only these two men were booked on the charge of murder.  Committing 30 murders requires the abetment and active assistance of many people in the procurement of weapons, getaway vehicles etc.  But instead of arresting the network of perhaps 100 people, they apprehended only two.” 

According to Turabi, the SSP recruits new contacts in jail through its imprisoned activists.  The fresh recruits, upon their release, ensure the continuation of the party’s deadly agenda.  Says he, “Ten maulvis of the Deobandi sect, to which the SSP and the entire jihadi cadre in Pakistan subscribes, visit Central Jail each day for tableegh (religious sermons).  No Shia or Barelvi maulvis have permission to expound their views on religion to the prisoners.” 

            Allama Turabi asserts that the SSP operates with impunity because it is propped up by intelligence agencies and also has sympathisers within the police force.  He accuses Senior Superintendent Police West, Tariq Khokhar, of openly supporting the SSP to the extent that activists of the party cruise around the city in his official mobile.  “Then there are some police officials who handle the SSP with kid gloves because they are afraid of them or have been paid off by them,” he says. 

            Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Farooq Awan, who heads the Sindh police anti-terrorist wing, argues  that while the SSP may have some supporters in the police and other law-enforcement agencies, so do the Shia sectarian parties. 

            However, DSP Farooq Awan maintains that this support is covert.  “How can terrorists with 20 lakh rupees head money be seen openly in the company of police officials?” he asks.  “The SSP West, Tariq Khokhar, is accused by the TJP of abetting the Sipah-e-Sahaba because most of the sectarian killings have occurred in district west.  But I know that when Khokhar was posted in the Punjab, the SSP was gunning for him.”

However, there is evidence to corroborate the contention that the SSP’s influence permeates law-enforcement agencies; one of the suspects in Dr. Asad Bokhari’s murder is a member of the Rangers while in another case, a head constable of District South, Tariq Shafi, has been arrested, reportedly admitting in his subsequent interrogation that he is responsible for killing 25 Shias.  Both men are members of the SSP. 

            Another instance of the SSP having friends in high places was demonstrated last Ramazan when, after they were thwarted from taking out a procession in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, several SSP activists resorted to violence and vandalism.  They were promptly arrested.  Soon however,  the SSP East, Captain Mir Zubair, received orders to set them free.  When he refused to comply, a top police official, who was himself reportedly following directives from intelligence personnel, personally intervened and had the activists released. SSP Zubair was transferred from his post in mid-January 2001.

            The case of the Khoja doctor, Sibtain Dossa, who was murdered on April 2, 2000, is even more interesting in this respect.  Of the four assailants, only one, a member of the SSP, was apprehended and identified by the sole witness to the killing.  During the course of the trial, however, the judge, in an unprecedented step, had the murder re-enacted at the scene of the crime and vehemently contested the witness’ version.  The accused was acquitted.  Two of the absconding accused are reported to be the Jaish Mohammed chief, Maulana Masood Azhar’s bodyguards.   

             In DSP Farooq Awan’s opinion, doctors like Sibtain Dossa were targetted on account of being Shias rather than because of their profession and he concurs with the assertion that the Sunni doctors who have been murdered in recent years were mostly victims of mistaken identity.  “As doctors, with their predictable routines, they presented easy targets.”  However, he refutes the belief that in recent years doctors have been murdered for sectarian reasons rather than ethnic as being too simplistic and says that the divide between the two categories is very fluid.  “Ethnic groups have taken shelter behind sectarian outfits to achieve their objectives,” he maintains.  Thus, he says, the Sipah-e-Mohammed and Pasban-i-Islam, the TJP’s militant wings, count on the tacit support of certain elements within the MQM (Altaf), while the SSP and LJ have their sympathisers within the MQM (Haqiqi).

            The increased frequency of sectarian killings of Shias in Karachi is explained by Farooq Awan as the result of a tussle between two factions of the LJ, the Riaz Basra group and the Qari Hye group.  Qari Hye was Basra’s lieutenant and ran the latter’s training camp in Sarobi, Afghanistan, until the two fell out and formed their own respective factions of the Lashkar.  While the majority of Hye’s supporters are Karachi-based, Basra’s activists have their roots in the Punjab, but with a substantial portion of LJ’s funding derived from wealthy benefactors in Karachi, both factions are jostling for a slice of the pie.  Says Awan, “In order to get funding, each has to demonstrate that it is more active than the other.  The result – more sectarian killings in Karachi.”

The scale of funding to sectarian organisations is indicated by the recent admission of the SSP’s finance secretary, who was arrested by the police, that his organisation receives about 32 lakh rupees each year from Karachi alone for the sole purpose of posting bail, assisting its imprisoned activists and the families of deceased activists.

            Conceding that steps urgently need to be taken against sectarian killings in the city, Awan adds that Sindh must take a leaf out of the Punjab government’s book.  “Why has the incidence of sectarian killings in the Punjab reduced so dramatically?  One reason is that its government has given incentives by offering large amounts of reward money for the arrest of sectarian terrorists belonging to the province.  There is reward money of 50 lakh rupees on Basra, 20 lakh on Akram Lahori, 5 lakh on Qari Hye, and so on.  In Sindh, no reward has been offered for the arrest of even a single sectarian terrorist although rewards have been offered in the case of  dacoits like Ahmadu Jagirani.”  In Farooq Awan’s opinion, there are no more than 250 to 300 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists in the entire country and if concerted efforts are made, there is no reason why they cannot be apprehended.

            It appears that the Sindh police is indeed looking towards its counterpart in the Punjab.  On the anvil are plans to restructure the anti-terrorist wing of the Sindh police, appoint the DIG, CID (central investigation department) as its head as in the Punjab and provide it with more funding and equipment to fight terrorist and sectarian crimes.  Surveillance in sensitive areas of Karachi by plainclothes police and reward money for the arrest of sectarian terrorists has also been proposed.

The legal system can also be a stumbling block for the successful resolution of sectarian crimes.  DSP Farooq Awan says that even obtaining remand for suspects in sectarian murders is a problem because judges fear retaliation from terrorist networks.  “In Haq Nawaz Jhangvi’s murder, the case passed through the hands of 40 judges,” he discloses. 

Meanwhile, a PMA delegation recently held a meeting with the governor of Sindh where the IG and DIG Police, health secretary, health minister and commissioner Karachi were also present, to express the medical community’s growing concern over the killing of doctors and urge immediate action against the assassins. The PMA has also held a meeting with top police personnel in this respect. 

            TJP’s Allama Turabi says that he has met with various religious organisations as well as the commissioner Karachi to convey his distress at sectarian killings in the city, adding that his party may file a case in this context in Belgium, which has recently allowed international cases of human rights violations to be filed in its courts.

            Meanwhile, until sectarian and terrorist elements in the country are taken firmly to task, doctors in Karachi will continue to look over their shoulder at every step, in mortal fear of being the next victim of an assassin’s bullet.