KARACHI: Most parts of the city till Saturday afternoon remained closed with transport being off the roads and commercial activities suspended following a ‘day of mourning’ call given by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) against the ‘extra-judicial killing of workers’.The opposition party, however, called off the ‘day of mourning’ in the second half of the day by making a fresh ‘appeal’ to traders and transporters to resume their business.

The two major stakeholders of the city business — traders and transporters — had announced hardly an hour after MQM’s Friday appeal to keep their activities suspended. They said the business activities remained completely suspended during the first half of the day and it started limping back to normality only after the MQM made the fresh announcement on Saturday.

“Following their [MQM’s] announcement, a large number of transporters started plying buses after 3pm though the numbers of vehicles remained much lower than the normal days,” said Irshad Bukhari of the Karachi Transport Ittehad. Similar views were shared by Ateeq Mir of the Karachi Tajir Ittehad, who said the party’s announcement helped resuming retail business but the wholesale markets and major commercial centres remained closed.

“The wholesale markets and major commercial centres begin their activities early morning,” he said. “As salesmen and other staff, who run the markets, were unable to reach their workplace, they remained closed. But definitely business activities returned to retail markets in the evening to large extent.”

The MQM coordination committee earlier ‘thanked’ the market associations, transporters, petrol pumps and CNG owners and private school managements for keeping their activities closed during the day and ‘registering their protest against injustice’. The party stated: “The coordination committee is fully aware of the problems being faced by common people. It appealed to the transporters, petrol pump owners, shopkeepers, daily wage-earners and market associations to resume their business activities after 2pm. After 2pm the day of mourning should be restricted to offering recitation of the Holy Quran and Fateha for Salman Nooruddin and other martyrs of the MQM.”

The party had ‘appealed’ for ‘day of mourning’ for Saturday against ‘extra-judicial killings’ of its workers during ‘targeted-operation’ demanding registration of a murder case against the Karachi police chief. The MQM claimed to have lost some 10 workers during the past few weeks, who were picked up by ‘unknown officials’ only to be found dead after a few days in different city areas. One of them, Mohammad Salman, was found dead on February 4 from an area near Quaidabad.

The ‘day of mourning’ also affected activities at courts as the legal proceedings remained partially suspended at the subordinate judiciary. A large number of lawyers and litigants did not turn up for want of public transport and uncertain law and order situation.

Although the undertrial prisoners were brought to the city courts, district courts in Malir, anti-terrorism courts and other special courts of the city, most of the cases fixed for Saturday were simply adjourned due to the absence of witnesses, lawyers and investigating officers while the attendance of court staff also remained thin.

However, the police produced the newly-arrested suspects in courts for remand and judges heard bail applications and other urgent matters.