As I left home for office this (Friday) morning and had walked only a few steps towards the main road, I saw about a dozen policemen in uniform and as many people of the area before a market, off Yateem Khana bus adda.

Two police vehicles were parked before the shops. I saw some known faces in the crowd. Dacoity! One said, "All the shopkeepers have been looted."

Two men entered each shop at the same time. One of them had a mauser. They snatched all the day’s earnings of the shopkeepers at gunpoint while three men of the gang were keeping watch outside the shops and fled away. The dacoits were thirteen in number and had all come on motorbikes. The operation took hardly any time -- a few minutes, one would say.

There are five shops in a row in Khalil Market. For many this was the time for Juma prayers and there were no customers.

The shopkeepers were bewildered, so were the people in the area. Nobody had noted down any number on the number plates on the bikes they rode. "Such crimes are conducted on stolen bikes," one said when I was asking the shopkeepers and their assistants if anyone had noted the numbers.

This is not the first time that such a dacoity has taken place. Many such incidents have been reported in the past just in the vicinity of Yateem Khana. Before the widening of the Multan Road highway, there was a shop here that sold stationery and cheap snacks. This shopkeeper was looted twice; once, on the last day of Ramzan. Like today, someone took away all his day’s earnings at gunpoint.

A shopkeeper asked, "What do you write, baji? The truth is that there is no security. Anyone can snatch our day’s earning and we are left to look on helplessly. A man comes and picks up snack packs, introducing himself as food inspector, says the quality of the food products you sell need to be verified and walks away with my stuff."

I remember an old shopkeeper telling me, "After a fellow ran away with my money at gunpoint, a man in plainclothes came, introduced himself as a policeman, described the physique and get-up of the dacoit, the colour of the shalwar kameez he was wearing and when I confirmed, ‘Yes, he was exactly like that,’ he left, saying thank you -- as if he had come to confirm he was the same person ‘the policeman in plainclothes’ sent to my shop."

There are numerous shops along the road, in everybody’s view. A famous general store, the first at Chowk Yateem Khana, lost all its day’s earning about ten days back when somebody had run away with the tijori (iron safe). The old man who first started this shop now sits on a chair outside the store.

For nearly 50 years, the shop has had an old-fashioned money box at the very entrance of the shop where the small denomination notes would be kept in the upper drawers while big notes would be put in the lower section of the safe. It was in everybody’s view and the general store had regular customers. Now no one is safe in public view after the incident. Nobody said how much money had gone.

Today also, I asked the freshly robbed shopkeepers how much money they had lost and they said, "Whatever we had earned today."

All the shops I have mentioned are on the main Multan Road near Chowk Yateem Khana and just a few steps away from the bus stop.

So, they are all in full public view. Wonder how nobody saw the dacoits but let me share an incident that I myself am witness to.

Early this year, I was coming back from a superstore at Flat Stop, Allama Iqbal Town, when I saw a well-built man in starched, pressed white shalwar kameez, harassing a teenager. Something had gone missing from his motorbike which he had parked outside the superstore and he found the poor boy in the parking lot. I saw the man take out a pistol and move it back and forth, putting his finger on the trigger, pointing towards the boy.

The boy’s face turned white. I crossed the road where a policeman was standing. I told him to do something about it but instead he started looking the other way. I felt very helpless then. Probably, people feel the same way when they see someone with a weapon that can kill.

Fortunately, the man put his pistol back in his pocket and spared the poor boy after hurling expletives at him.

Security is becoming a big question in our country. Particularly, shopkeepers feel very vulnerable.