‘Bring cameras, then we’ll talk’

KARACHI: A day after their teenage daughter N was reportedly raped and then killed, a couple and their surviving children have disappeared from their Zafar Town neighbourhood where life appears to have returned to normal.

When Daily Times visited the area on Friday, many people said that they would only talk about the incident if they came on television. Others said the police was paid to protect people and not them.

There were some who did show remorse. “I arrived shortly before the police carried the two bodies out,” said Mohammad Ali, a neighbour, while talking to Daily Times Friday. “Nearly everyone had guns and could have saved the family, had they intervened earlier.” One of her attackers was killed by the police that found N’s bloodied body inside. Her mother, who managed to escape, had to call her husband on a bystander’s cell phone and he called the police. No one in the crowd stepped up to help.

Some people from the neighbourhood said they had thought of helping N several times. “I couldn’t do anything as I wasn’t armed,” said Ali Khan. “I did not want to deprive my own daughters of a father.” Others made claims that the police dispersed the crowd.

On the contrary, DSP Chaudhary Sohail Faiz said that he was at the export processing zone when he heard the report on the wireless. “I was afraid that the police mobile unit might assist the attackers in fleeing, so I rushed there,” he said.

The DSP was in plainclothes so no one in the crowd knew he was a policeman when he approached. “A man carrying a repeater gun was standing next to me. He told me he was there to protect the police officers from being attacked from behind while trying to break into the house,” DSP Faiz said. “It did not seem to register with him that had he fired a few rounds into the air earlier, the attackers may have taken off earlier.”

The man with the repeated gun and others had been more interested in N’s mother who was beating her face and head in frustration and covering herself with dirt as her daughter was being attacked inside.

The police now suspect that some personal enmity was the reason why N was killed as the houses were very small and consisted of a single room, bathroom and kitchen, ruling out a robbery.
Source: Daily Times
Date:4/19/2008

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