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KARACHI, Dec 6: Among the victims of the Oct 18 bomb blasts targeting the homecoming rally of the chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Benazir Bhutto, are those who suffered mental trauma so severe that, though physically able, they can no longer conduct their lives normally.
The Karsaz tragedy claimed over 140 lives, wounded dozens of others – some of whom were crippled for life – while a number remain unaccounted for. As investigations into the twin bombings continue, a PPP representative who is looking after the affairs of the people missing since the incident told Dawn that so far, at least five people have been found in places as far away as Jhelum and Chakwal.
These people display a severely diminished mental capacity and while they have been reunited with their families, they are reported to be “acting strange,” said Habib Jan, who is in charge of the PPP London media cell. “Whether these people are getting the treatment they require is anybody’s guess,” said Mr Jan, who is currently performing his duties in Karachi.
One of the people who has apparently been emotionally and mentally affected by the Karsaz tragedy is 15-year-old Azam Shani. A resident of Malir, he had gone to participate in the Oct 18 rally to welcome Ms Bhutto’s return after 8 years of self-imposed exile.
“He went missing after the blasts and for several days, we searched in vain in the city’s hospitals and the Edhi morgue,” his elderly father, Abdul Hafeez, told Dawn. “It was only on November 11 that we learned that Shani had somehow reached Jhelum. He had called his ustad and we subsequently arranged his return to the city.”
According to Mr Hafeez, the boy is physically in good health but displayed signs of trauma after his return to his home. “Physically he is fit but initially, following his return, he acted quite strange,” said the old man. “He sometimes still does but he appears to be getting better.”
Azam Shani, who works at a computerised embroidery shop in Malir, appears to have boarded a bus headed towards Jhelum in the confusion following the blasts, said his father.
PPP activist Mr Jan said that so far, his party had learned of five people who boarded various buses bound for distant parts of the country immediately after the Oct 18 blasts. “These people were eventually traced by their relatives but are believed to have suffered severe mental trauma,” he remarked.
Silent victims
According to Dr Haider Naqvi, an assistant professor at the Aga Khan University Hospital’s department of psychiatry, the symptoms attributed to these victims are typical of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and are often also observed in victims of natural calamities.
“Such cases of people wandering around aimlessly and bearing vacant expressions were reported after the 2005 earthquake as well,” he told Dawn. “The initial steps for the treatment of such patients include de-briefing and counselling therapy.” He pointed out that it was the government’s responsibility to ensure that such victims of violence were properly rehabilitated.
In the case of 25-year-old Zulfiqar Ali, however, it appears as though the authorities unknowingly played a role in destabilising him mentally. Described by his brother Mohammed Tariq as a diehard PPP worker, Ali went missing after the Oct 18 blasts. It later emerged that he had been picked up by the police and spent eight to ten days under custody, during which time his brother believes he was subjected to police brutality. “I’m sure that they beat him up during his detention,” Tariq told Dawn. “But after failing to extract anything from him, they blind-folded him and set him free. These days, he is resting in his hometown, Larkana.”
While Ali has been traced, albeit in a shaky mental condition, the family members of 17-year-old Malik Rizwan Awan are still searching for news of his whereabouts or a confirmation as to his death. According to his brother Farooq Awan, the young man has been missing since the Oct 18 blasts. In a desperate attempt to get a lead, Farooq employed army-trained sniffer dogs from the Army Dog Centre, Hyderabad.
“That night, my brothers Rizwan and Arif were close to the Karsaz PSO pump and I was behind Benazir Bhutto’s truck,” Farooq related. “When the first blast occurred, Arif told Rizwan to retreat further into the petrol station and came running towards the truck to look for my companions and I.”
At this point, the second explosion took place and while Arif survived, there has since been no sign of Rizwan. While it is possible that he perished in the blast, it is also possible that he was mentally affected and wandered off, as did Azam Shani.
The latter possibility is indicated by the fact that after smelling clothes that had been worn by Rizwan, the sniffer dogs picked up his scent at the PSO pump where he was last seen by his brothers. “The dogs covered a distance of over one kilometre,” said Farooq Awan. “They went through the settlement behind the PSO pump and followed the trail up to main Sharea Faisal, where they stopped.”
The procedure was carried out three times in order to satisfy the family but the dogs lost the scent at the same spot. Reporting on their findings, the dog handlers told the family that it was possible that Rizwan had boarded some vehicle at that point, or had been forcibly taken away from that spot in a vehicle. They informed the family that the dogs’ detection radius spanned about 40 kilometres but in this case, the animals had repeatedly covered only the same trail of one about kilometre, and had lost the scent at the same spot.
Over a month after the tragedy, people continue to contact the PPP to report missing relatives. Just a few days ago, Shabbir Husain Shah reached Karachi from Sargodha to report that his son, Zaheer Abbas, had been missing since Oct 18 when he had arrived in Karachi to attend Ms Bhutto’s homecoming.
And while the list of the missing prepared by the PPP had reduced from the initial figure of 38 to 19 by Thursday (Dec 6), nearly two dozen people remain untraced.
