The people of Karachi have not yet recovered from the massive killings across the city as well as the tragic incident of Chakra Goth when two rival drug-peddling groups exchanged fire overnight in Chanesar Goth. The exchange of fire took lives of two teenagers and a house was also torched during the violence. Chanesar Goth has been in the news for over a decade, but the police have always remained silent.
The ‘goth’ in Chanesar Goth means ‘village’ in the Sindhi language, and the locality has many identities. For anthropologists, it is the place where workers from the Indian city of Chittorgarh in the Rajasthan state were brought by the British rulers in the 19th century to spread the main railway track. However, if someone were to ask journalists covering the crime beat about Chanesar Goth, they would at once say that it is the hub of drug-pushing.
Chanesar Goth, a triangle-shaped, small but densely populated neighbourhood of Jamshed Town is surrounded by the posh area of Defence Phase-I in the southwest, Azam Basti in the south, Mehmoodabad Gate in the east, and a major railway track in the north.
Initially, Chanesar Goth was a small slum settlement comprising few huts of those workers who had arrived here to lay the railway track and then started living here. Later, many people moved here and erected huge buildings and, thus, it became a large colony.
Nevertheless, the notoriety of the area is not without reason because whoever wants to buy hashish in whatever quantity could get it here with ease. Young men mostly roam the streets of Chanesar Goth, one of the most backward settlements of the city in terms of infrastructure, and ask passers-by how much maal they need. Though there are many small-time drug dealers in the area, but three groups are supposed to be the most significant. The ‘Laasi’ group; the ‘Shoukat’ group, commonly known as ‘Shouk’; and the ‘Imran’ or ‘Immi’ group are the most notorious in Chanesar Goth.
The area frequently echoes with gunshots and almost every wall of each house bears bullet marks. The three drug-peddling groups have massive dens where they store hashish, but the police never raid these dens or try to recover drugs from their owners. Sources in the Police Department told this scribe that the Mehmoodabad police station is supposed to be the most lucrative police post as the drug-pushers pay huge amounts of money to the police to look the other way.
Majority of the residents of the area are labourers and daily-wage workers; and even though the drug-pushers are handful in number, they have always remained in the news, but the police never bother to launch a crackdown against them. The residents said that the police patrol the streets every day, but they walk by the street where all the dens are located without ever taking any action.
“There is a private police check-post that was established by a former station house officer. Usually, when the police catch an ordinary citizen, they take him to that check-post to negotiate a bribe for his release,” said a resident of the area. “We demand the government to take action against the police for their illegal activities at the police check-post and for not taking action against the real criminals,” he added.
