Gujjar Nala Operation: ‘As soon as the bulldozer demolished the house, the heart came into the fist’

90-year-old Sain Sarkar is sitting gloomily on a wooden pole by the side of Gujjar Nala passing between Sadiq Nagar and Kausar Niazi Colony in Federal B Area Block 4 of Gulberg Town in Karachi.

A roof is made by stretching cloth sheets over the thada, two cows are tied in front of them, which are their total assets, while a pile of debris is placed on the level of the thada.

Pointing to the pile of debris, Sain Sarkar said: ‘We had heard that the government was building a house, but government people came to our Kausar Niazi colony, demolished my house and left. Now I am at this age. Where to go, what to do, I do not understand.’

Sain added: ‘When the bulldozer came, I was feeding grass to my cows, I screamed a lot, shouted a lot, but they demolished the house. As soon as the house fell, my heart, my liver felt as if someone had grabbed it in a fist.’

Gujjar Nala is one of the many natural rain drains of Karachi, which starts from New Karachi and joins the Lyari river near Murid Goth.

According to the official records, the original length of this canal was 13 km and the path was 210 feet wide.

The anti-encroachment department, a subsidiary of Karachi municipality, started the operation of demolishing the houses around the Gujjar canal in the name of encroachment from February 3. went

Sonia Arif Masih, a resident of Kausar Niazi Colony, is among those affected by this operation against Tejazat. He told Independent Urdu: ‘We have been living here for decades. We built these houses painstakingly over the years and now the government wants to demolish them in a day and make us miserable. Give some time, give an alternative, it doesn’t happen.’

Sonia added: ‘We will not vacate the house under any circumstances, even if bulldozers run over us. Where will we go if the house collapses?’

The government has decided to construct a 30-feet wide road on both sides of the Gujjar canal, which will demolish more than 40,000 houses and shops or other commercial buildings in various slums on both sides of the canal. According to an estimate, more than 15,000 families will be affected if the houses around Gujjar Nala are demolished.

There are more than 200 houses of the Christian community in Sadiq Nagar and Kausar Niazi Colony and five churches will be demolished due to the operation, while many mosques and Imambargahs are also feared to be demolished.

East Rose Waris, a resident of Sadiq Nagar Colony on the other side of Gujar Nala opposite Kausar Niazi, told Independent Urdu that his parents had settled here many years ago, when there were bushes and no human population. First they built rough houses and now when the houses are built, the government is demolishing the houses.

According to East Rose: ‘When all of us sisters and brothers sit together, I look at the doors and walls of the house and wonder if this time will come again or not. My mother suffered a heart attack when a part of our house collapsed. Justice should be done to us and we should be given an alternative place.’