MQM-London’s deputy convener Professor Dr Hasan Zafar Arif was found dead in a car in Ilyas Goth on Sunday, Jan 14. Investigations have begun. A postmortem has been done but the results have been withheld as the histopathological report was still awaited when this report was filed on Monday. However, it is unlikely that this exercise will establish cause and his death will remain a mystery at least on official record.
It is often said that what the military establishment wasn't able to do to the MQM in the last three years during the Rangers-led operation, Altaf Hussain did to his own party in one phone call
But for Dr Arif’s family and close friends, the answer is obvious.
For its part, the MQM-London, as the ‘original’ party is now known, made it clear via its Twitter account that it was pointing a finger at law-enforcing agencies for what it believed was abducting and torturing the elderly professor and dumping his body in a suburb. His death is a major blow to the party as he was the only leader working on the surface, but at the same time, as is the case in politics, it will be used for mileage.
MQM-London is the new name for the original MQM and is controlled by Altaf Hussain from London. In 2016, law-enforcement cracked down on the MQM after Altaf made an incendiary speech. Old party hand Farooq Sattar was forced renounce ties and formed his own faction, MQM-Pakistan.
Dr Arif had left for home on Saturday evening after a meeting as he wanted to see off his daughter who was scheduled to fly to London Sunday morning, Abdul Majeed Karwani, a friend and the party’s legal aid committee member, told TFT outside the mortuary. By Sunday morning his wife called up saying he had never come home.
An old student who was in touch, Iftikhar Khan, asked why the professor would end up in Rehri Goth, where he had no business going. “Why are bodies found in Sohrab Goth and Rehri Goth,” Khan asked. We all know who picked him up and dumped his body, but we can’t name them, he went on to add.
It was noted that Dr Arif's body was found in Rehri Goth which falls in the jurisdiction of Rao Anwar, the SSP of Malir, who is notorious for holding questionable 'encounters' or shoot-outs with suspects. He is just as well known for his cordial working relationship with the establishment
A Karachi University faculty member who was a student when Dr Arif taught there is Dr Riaz Ahmed, who also reached the mortuary. He showed TFT photos from a mobile phone which he believed proved that Dr Arif was made to sit in the backseat of his car. “Our society has become so [cruel] that even a seventy-year-old is not spared,” he said. Dr Ahmed himself was picked up security agencies in April last year and booked for possession of an unlicensed weapon, as he was trying to hold a press conference for Prof Arif’s release.
It was noted that Dr Arif’s body was found in Rehri Goth which falls in the jurisdiction of Rao Anwar, the SSP of Malir, who is notorious for holding questionable ‘encounters’ or shoot-outs with suspects. He is just as well known for his cordial working relationship with the establishment.
Only a few people, including close family members, former students, friends and some university teachers dared to visit Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre’s mortuary. Even though he was the only leader of MQM-London struggling to carry on political work in Pakistan, no party workers gathered to take Dr Arif’s body for burial. It was indeed a sobering barometer for the state of this moth-eaten political party.
A bad year
Prof. Hasan Zafar Arif came into the spotlight when he emerged to defend Altaf Hussain and his beleaguered Muttahida Qaumi Movement. It is a task that old party loyalists led by the silver-tongued Farooq Sattar have failed to accomplish, a task that was wittingly or unwittingly created by Mr Hussain on August 22 when he decided to shout anti-Pakistan slogans and instigate his followers to attack media houses.
It went all so horribly wrong. The party had already been staging a hunger strike to protest against what it said were the extra-judicial killings and arrest of party workers. Then, that fateful speech. It is often said that what the military establishment wasn’t able to do to the MQM in the last three years during the Rangers-led operation, Altaf Hussain did to his own party in one phone call.
Defending this party was certainly a tall order for someone who just joined it. Prof. Hasan Zafar Arif actually had a long political career with the Pakistan Peoples Party but had joined the MQM just a month before August 22. It was not going to be a smooth ride.
In fact, joining the MQM proved less than fortunate for him. He was first picked up on October 22, 2016 from outside the Karachi Press Club when he went to address a press conference about the restructuring of MQM-London post the August 22 split after Altaf Hussain’s speech. He was kept in detention for two months under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. But when he was released from prison he was arrested again, on December 20, 2016. He was released in April 2017. But the six-month incarceration didn’t deter Prof Arif from political association.
What political circles are keen to see and, indeed many people in Karachi, is whether people will come out to vote for the Altaf-led MQM-London in the next elections. It remains to be seen if the establishment’s crackdown and in many cases oppressive tactics will succeed in running it into the ground.
An Islamabad-based foreign journalist was expecting violence to break out in the wake of Dr Arif’s death. I had a difficult time explaining to him how the political dynamics of Karachi have changed. There was barely a ripple.
MQM-Pakistan leader Farooq Sattar was the first one to condemn the death, however the rest of political parties were a bit cautious. It took an entire day for the Pakistan Peoples Party to issue a statement. In a handout, the PPP chairman expressed concern over the media reports about his disappearance and unnatural death and asked the home minister to inquire into these reports.
Similarly, the Karachi leadership of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf expressed concern over the death. But that is where the story ends.
The writer is the Pakistan correspondent for Reuters News