"One fine morning, I was still in my flat and my driver was downstairs waiting in the car for me to drive me to the workplace. Suddenly three men arrived in a car, having registration number AZL-664 around 6:45 AM at my flat building in DHA 5 Extension. A man from the approaching car came out and carried out reconnaissance of our building. After completing his job he went back to his car. My driver by now was already suspicious and in the meanwhile my son went downstairs and the driver informed him about the behavior of the stranger. My son approached that car to inquire them but they escaped. I am afraid that they came for an offense or planning for a crime. Therefore I request you to provide security around my building and keep a close eye on suspicious activities."

This was the complaint Dr Manzoor Memon lodged in Darakshan Police Station while addressing the Station House Officer [SHO] on April 23, 2014.

This should have been a wakeup call for the concerned police station but they paid no heed to the complaint, despite the fact that doctors continued to be on the hit-list of namaloom terrorists. And the inevitable happened.

Exactly after 20 days, on May 13, 2014 Dr Memon, the Senior Medical Legal Officer of state-run Jinnah Hospital, was gunned down along with his driver at Punjab Chowrangi when he was heading towards his house from Jinnah Hospital.

He was not the only doctor under severe life threat in this lawless city of 20 million people. Last year, 17 doctors were gunned down in Karachi, which has been the highest figure since the beginning of this trend in the 1990s. On January 10 this year, two doctors, including a homoeopathic practitioner, were killed within 10 minutes in the same vicinity of Nazimabad Karachi. In a few other attempts, some medical practitioners have survived assassination attempts as well.

The entire doctors’ fraternity is terrified. Many of them have shut down their clinics and prefer to stay at home. Several have left the country due to constant state of fear.

"We are sitting ducks; anyone can come and kill us," says Dr Qazi Wasiq, the General Secretary of the Karachi Chapter of Pakistan Medical Association (PMA).

The provincial government of Sindh, led by Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, is least bothered about this rising trend of killing of doctors. The Karachiites have so far lost 126 medical practitioners including specialists, general physicians and surgeons since 1995.

Explaining the motive of the surge in these killings, the President of PMA Karachi, Dr Idrees Adhi, said there are two reasons of shooting a doctor: "In most cases, the motive is sectarian including the fact that they were Shia, Sunni, Deobandi or Ahmadi, while the other motive is extortion."

Medical practitioners were optimistic that the end of 2014 will also switch off the killing button but the reign of terror still persists. On the very first day of the new year, Dr Ahsaan Ali was gunned down in Baldia Town area of District West. While these lines are being written, another two doctors have been shot dead in the city.

Talking to TNS, the head of Sectarian Intelligence Unit [SIU] of CID Sindh, Khurram Waris, says "majority of the doctors who have been killed in Karachi belonged to the Shia sect and were targeted by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi [LeJ]".

"During interrogations, terrorists of LeJ disclosed that they kill Shia doctors to take revenge for their Muftis and scholars who are being eliminated by fellow Shia men," says Waris. They believe that whenever a Shia doctor is killed, it is a social and economic meltdown for the sect because it takes at least five years for a person to become a practitioner after spending huge amount of money. "Same is the case with our Islamic scholars," they say.

Waris who has cracked several murder cases of doctors in the past believes the doctor’s reconnaissance can be carried out easily. But it conveys a dreadful message not only to the hundreds of patients but to the entire society.

In July 2002, one of the founders of deadly banned sectarian outfit LeJ and its former chief, Muhammad Ajmal aka Akram Lahori was apprehended from Karachi. His interrogation report, which is available with TNS, revealed that he had confessed to the killing of at least nine doctors.

"We are left at the mercy of criminals," says Dr Idrees Adhi, President PMA Karachi Chapter. "Now we are under fire from extortionists as well".

The situation is worsening with time. Revealing horrible details Dr Adhi explains, "our fellow practitioners are under constant threat from criminals. Most of the doctors working in the five major public and private hospitals of Karachi have paid protection money to the extortionists".

The extortionists initially call, send emails or letters to their targets and if they don’t get adequate response, they open fire or throw hand grenades on their clinics or houses. According to President PMA Karachi, every day the Association receives more than dozen complaints from their members about extortion. Now this situation surely will force any doctor to leave the country for good. A well-known surgeon of a famous hospital of the city left Pakistan within a day after receiving death threats.

The situation is so grave that even the female doctors are not safe from the wrath of criminals. "Two female practitioners have also lost their lives and last year more than 50 female doctors received extortion calls. Most of them paid the money," says Dr Adhi.

On November 29, 2012 Dr Kaneez Fatima along with her husband Dr Iqbal Hasan was assassinated in Mubina Town area. Another female doctor Rubina Khalid car was intercepted by assailants in Gulistan-e-Jouhar on November 23 last year and was shot dead when she was on her way back home from Dow University. A few months back a female practitioner received a call for 5 million rupees and when she denied, her clinic was attacked. She was upstairs at the time of the attack but her accountant was not fortunate enough. He perished in the attack. The doctor’s spouse immediately arrived on the spot, shut down the clinic and dispatched the dead body of the accountant to his home town. After that the entire family left the country.

In another incident, one of the friends of a senior doctor who had left the country and settled in United States received a message stating that "pass on this message to Dr…… to send 0.5 million rupees to me in South Africa. I have killed 12 doctors of Karachi. He is in America but his family is in Pakistan and on my target. Mirza Bhai"

The provincial government of the Sindh is least bothered about the killing of doctors. The Pakistan Medical Association has lost all hopes from the government and the political leadership of the province. According to PMA, not a single minister, or the chief minister, has issued any statement or ever visited the PMA house for condolence. The government has never announced a compensation for the victims’ families either.

The PMA Karachi wrote a letter on January 2 this year addressing the chief minister regarding the ongoing slaughter of their members. "These killings are continuous despite several meetings with you and officials of LEAs [Law Enforcing Agencies]. That includes meeting with Gen. Rizwan Akhtar then DG Rangers and Now DG ISI along with high officials of the police. We cannot accept the apathy of the IG of the Police and the whole department, evident by the statement in the print media made by the IG Police Mr. Ghulam Haider Jamali about 10 days ago wherein he instructed the police officials to contact PMA officials to chalk out the strategy for the security of doctors for which we are still waiting". The letter is copied to the president, prime minister, chief justice of Pakistan, Chief of Army Staff, Federal Minister of Interior, DG ISI, governor Sindh, chief justice Sindh High Court, chief secretary Sindh, DG Rangers Sindh and IG Police.

After receiving the letter, the new DG Rangers Sindh Major General Bilal Akbar invited a delegation of PMA on Jan 10. For the first time, the PMA leadership looks confident after meeting with the Director General Pakistan Rangers Sindh. "This time he [DG Rangers] means business, he was passing orders to his subordinates during the meeting and asked them to provide updates on a daily basis about the issues of doctors," says Dr Wasiq. "DG Rangers assured to resolve all our issues on a priority basis and requested us that if any doctor has any complaint, he or she can send his query to Rangers SMS service number 1101, mentioning Doc Priority."

Currently the entire doctors’ community feels threatened and is moving from Karachi either to up country or elsewhere in the world. The Secretary General of Pakistan Medical Association, Dr Mirza Ali Azhar, says: "No one is healing our wounds. We have been restraining the medical community from going on strike in public sector hospitals since it causes inconvenience to the already suffering humanity. But the government is continuously giving us a cold shoulder."

Counting the dead

Syed Arfeen

The deadly wave started back in 1995 when eight doctors were massacred. This trend continued for 10 years and lasted till 2004. According to PMA database, 6 doctors were assassinated in 1996. In the following year i.e. 1997 the trend showed an alarming figure of 13 doctors who were executed. Four professionals from the same community were killed in 1998, seven in 1999, six in 2000, thirteen in 2001, seven in 2002, two in 2003 and three in 2004. From 2005 to 2009, no such incident was reported. But this sigh of relief for the community proved to be short-lived because the next five years became the worst nightmare where besides killing they had to face extortion and kidnapping threats as well.
Since the beginning of 2010, the city has lost 56 medical physicians compared to the ten-year spree of 1990s that took the lives of 70 professionals. The terrorists shot down eight doctors in 2010 and four in 2011. For the last three years, the community fellows have experienced a sudden escalation in the killing of their colleagues. They lost 11, 14 and 17 fellows in 2012, 2013 and 2014, respectively.