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Friday March 29, 2024

For Karachi’s fleeing criminals, town of Hub takes a literal meaning

By Zia Ur Rehman
May 26, 2016

Karachi: To escape the ongoing crackdown in Karachi, many criminals have taken refuge in the adjoining town of Hub in Balochistan.

Hub, popularly known as Hub Chowki, is an industrial town in Balochistan’s Lasbela district, and because of its close proximity with Karachi, especially Lyari, it is considered a part of the city.

After an operation was launched in Karachi against target killers, extortionists and kidnappers in September 2013, many members of the criminal syndicates operating in Lyari, Malir and other parts of the city were either killed or arrested.

 “It [the crackdown] compelled them to hide in Hub, where they own houses and also have relatives besides having well-established connections with the criminals there,” said a Lyari-based political leader.  

In Hub, police have arrested several suspects who had left the city after the Rangers-led crackdown on Lyari’s criminal gangs.

Three days ago, the Hub police arrested two suspects in the Allahabad area there. One of them is Hamid, son of Abdul Ghani Baloch and associated with the Uzair Baloch-led gang.

In March, police had arrested Hamid alias Aamir, brother of slain gang leader Arshad Pappu, and seized a large quantity of illegal weapons from him.

Zia Mandokhel, a senior police officer of Lasbela district, said police had arrested dozens of suspects who were hiding in Hub.  

“Along with the operation in Karachi, the police in Hub too are keeping a close eye for criminals coming from the city here,” Mandokhel told The News.

“Gharibabad and Galaxy Town are two localities of Hub, where most gangsters take refuge.”

The officer said Hub too was affected by gang violence. “Members of the all main gangs were involved in fierce infighting and selling drugs and arms,” he said.

“But the crackdown has heavily dented their networks in Hub.”

The officer said most criminals sneak into Hub through streams linking the town with Karachi.

Since the 70s

Police officials and other sources say that Hub has been a hiding place for the gangsters of Lyari and Malir since the 1970s and most of them also own houses there.

There, they stay low to avoid being spotted by the law-enforcement agencies.

Since the 70s, Lyari-based criminal groups, then headed by Shair Muhamad alias Sheru and Daad Muhammad alias Daadal, have been using Hub - mainly to take refuge and keep traders kidnapped for ransoms.

Then Abdul Rehman alias Rehman Dakait, Arshad Pappu, Ghaffar Zikri, Uzair Baloch, and Baba Laadla too used Hub for the same activities.

“The criminals of Lyari escape to Hub whenever the state machinery moves against them,” said a police officer in Lyari.

He added that there was history of several gun battles between police and gangsters in Hub.

In a famous encounter in 2005, slain senior police officer Chaudary Aslam, the Lyari town police officer and head of the Lyari Task Force back then, had raided Rehman Dakait’s hideout known as White House in Hub.

Kalakot SHO Arshad Butt was killed in the shootout and officers including Aslam, ASP Omar Shahid, and then DSP Irfan Bahadur were injured. Dakait had managed to escape.

Mengalabad too is a neighbourhood of Hub notorious for Lyari-based gangsters take refuge there. The criminals there paid by gangsters to provide them with accommodation for hiding.

“The locality had become infamous in the past when a criminal there, Agha Janaan, sold drugs and extorted traders in the town,” said a Hub-based politician.

However, Janaan was killed in a shootout with the law-enforcement agencies a few years ago.

Lyari’s key gang commander Abdul Jabbar alias Jhengu, and his accomplice, Abdul Ghani, were killed in January 2014 apparently in a traffic accident in the Bela area, near Hub. However, sources in Lyari claimed that they were killed by the law-enforcement agencies.