Security at Karachi University: a tale of convenient disregard

The December 1 attack on the hostel of Peshawar’s Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) reminded everyone of the horrifying 2014 Army Public School (APS) massacre, carried out in the same month and in the same city.

Nine people were killed and 37 injured in the ATI attack this past Friday, while the APS carnage of December 16 three years ago had left 141 people, including 132 schoolchildren, dead.

In the context of rudimentary security arrangements made at educational institutions across Karachi, The News had earlier looked into the security affairs of the city’s largest varsity, the University of Karachi, which is mired in controversy amid allegations that it has become an active recruiting ground for religious radical outfits.

The investigation reveals that when it comes to providing students as well as teachers and other members of staff with a safe and secure environment on campus, KU’s security arrangements leave a lot to be desired.

Having been at the centre of criticism for a series of serious security lapses on its premises in the past 12 years, the discussion on KU’s faulty security gained renewed prominence after three members, all in their 20s, of a recently disbanded gang of terrorists, the Ansarul Sharia Pakistan (ASP), were disclosed to have acquired postgraduate degrees from the university.

On September 11 this year, Sindh Rangers Director General Maj Gen Muhammad Saeed, in an interview to a local TV channel, claimed that three ASP members had done their Masters from KU’s Department of Applied Physics.

While the incidents were a cause of concern for a debate to have stirred up over KU’s insufficient security, they were perhaps not serious enough for the management’s oft-made written and verbal commitments to materialise into action.  

One plan after the other

The 12-point security plan submitted by KU Campus Security Officer (CSO) Muhammad Asif to the university’s registrar following the damning revelation was rejected. The News learnt that the security officer had handed in the same proposal back in 2005.

Outlining suggestions to improve the campus’s physical security, CSO Asif had recommended installation of road blockers and walk-through gates at KU’s main entrances; security guards were also proposed to be equipped with under-vehicle search mirrors.

Recruitment of at least 80 security guards, construction of watchtowers, a boundary wall around the 1,279-acre campus and installation of barbed wires on the wall besides installation of CCTV cameras at all the university’s gates were also among the CSO’s suggestions.

The News learnt that besides CSO Asif’s plan, another proposal was submitted to KU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Muhammad Ajmal Khan. Appointed by Dr Khan as chief security officer on April 7, Lt Col (retd) Muhammad Omair Haider Siddiqui resigned in three months, on July 10, after the university refused to implement his 72-page security plan.

But while all the plans focus on KU’s physical security, there was not much the university officials had to say about the measures implemented to keep a check on religious radicalisation.  

Whose job is it anyway?

With respect to involvement of KU’s students in terrorist activities, VC Khan asserted that it was not the university’s but the security agencies’ job to keep a check on which student was at risk of potential religious radicalisation.

“I assured officials of the Counter Terrorism Department of my cooperation in helping them locate students involved in terrorist activities,” he said. He, however, clarified that the university would not become a part of any witch-hunt.

While Khan claimed that the management did chalk out a strategy following the ASP fiasco, he refrained from disclosing it. “Besides KU’s own security department, a wing of the paramilitary soldiers has been present on campus since the past 32 years, and the only responsibility of this wing is to guard the campus.”

In exchange for this, he said, the Rangers’ commander and other officials had been provided an accommodation on the premises. “If anything were to happen in the university, the Rangers are aware that they would also be held equally accountable.”

Nevertheless, he was full of praise for the paramilitary force’s efforts in maintaining law and order on campus. “If the Rangers were to abandon the university, the security situation could further worsen.”  

The fault in our physical security

From unfit guards to broken boundary walls and surveillance cameras, there is a lot that is wrong with KU’s approach to security. An assessment carried out by security agencies in August 2008 had revealed that of the 113 security guards employed at the university, only 47 were found fit to perform their duties.

The profiling was carried out in the aftermath of a clash between the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and the All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organisation that left three students dead and 10 others injured after an exchange of gunfire.

What adds insult to injury is that it took a bomb blast on the university’s premises for these findings to surface, and two years later at that. Three students were injured after an IED went off near the cafeteria where members of the Imamia Students Organisation had gathered to offer the Friday prayers in December 2010.

While KU’s enrolment today stands at over 24,000, CSO Asif told The News that the university currently had only 116 guards performing security duties in two shifts. This means there is only one guard for the security of every 620 students.

Moreover, the CSO said the security department had eight double-barrel guns and four repeaters, all purchased in 1994 by the then VC Dr Abdul Wahab. “The firearms have gathered rust, but every year KU spends money and energy to renew licences of these rusted firearms.”

The security guards have two patrol vehicles, of which one is parked at the workshop while the other cannot move an inch without being pushed; add to this the fact that the guards have four motorbikes to ensure security of hundreds of acres, added Asif. “If the university were to face an emergency, there is not much that it can overcome, thanks to its paltry resources.”

Vowing to do more to increase the number of guards, VC Khan said he was not oblivious to the fact that majority of the university’s guards were unfit. Claiming of having attempted to recruit more guards and also advertising for the vacancies, he said the process was derailed by political intervention.  

Case of the broken boundary wall

The boundary wall facing the Karachi University Teachers Housing Society and Asma Garden is broken, in not one but many places. This is because the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) keeps razing it to use the plot as a landfill site, said Asif. “Only recently the KMC destroyed the wall and dumped offal of sacrificial animals there.”

Granted Rs30 million by the Higher Education Commission in the wake of the January 2016 attack on the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, KU’s own record shows that a mere Rs4.2 million of the grant was spent on repairing boundary walls. The remaining amount was apparently misappropriated.

On being questioned regarding the alleged misappropriation, an angered Dr Khan said the grant was inadequate to construct even a single boundary wall with proper watchtowers.

He then criticised bureaucratic hurdles which, he claimed, kept him from getting a wall constructed on one side of the campus that was unprotected. “Every time you think of having a wall constructed, one department starts fighting with the other over funds. I decided to hire a contractor, but even that didn’t work out.”  

Cameras yes, recordings no

While all the four entrance and exit points of KU are being monitored through CCTV cameras, there is ironically no system to record the footage of who goes in through the gates and when.

As is the case with every machine, these cameras develop faults as well, but the university administration appears adamant on repairing the existing ones instead of replacing them with new cameras.

The issue of flawed surveillance surfaced in September 2014 following the cold-blooded murder of the then KU Faculty of Islamic Studies dean Prof Dr Shakeel Auj.

CSO Asif said the investigators believed the attackers conducted Dr Auj’s reconnaissance from inside the university. Reportedly, they started tailing his car as it passed through KU’s popular food joint, the Sufi Hotel.

“The investigators could not get a hold of the footage because there was none. The place had no CCTV surveillance,” said Asif. It was further disclosed that five of the total six security cameras were out of order on the day of the attack.

As per the investigators’ findings, it was Dr Khalid Iraqi, the then adviser to the VC on security affairs, who was entrusted with the responsibility of installing security cameras at the university. It turns out that Dr Iraqi had installed cameras of two megapixel resolution at a cost of Rs8 million, and allegedly embezzled the remaining amount.

The News learnt that Lt Col Siddiqui was also tasked with the same job and was provided with a hefty Rs55 billion to install cameras. While he did install 42 cameras from the Maskan entrance to the roundabout near the Department of International Relations, he resigned soon after claiming the installation work was in its second phase.  

‘All depts raking it in illegally’

KU’s administrative system has collapsed, and it has been in a state of paralysis for a long time now, remarked VC Khan. “Every day I face a new trumped-up crisis of the bureaucrats. But I am fighting against this system.”

There is an illegal but organised system in place through which every department of the campus is making bad money, he claimed. “One can work with a system that is 25 per cent corrupt, or even 50 per cent ... but what do you do of a system that is corrupt to the core?”

Finance issues top the list of all that is wrong with KU, observed Khan. “Ever since I assumed charge of my office, I have been trying to persuade the Sindh government to appoint a competent finance director, but that hasn’t happened yet.” He claimed that his written queries to the accounts department regarding the university’s financial status were also yet to be responded to.