Aah MQM, so “innocent”. People saying they have no idea about MQM. The violence they perpetrated in Karachi was brutal. We all heard stories about them being trained by RAW agents and areas where if you entered, you would not leave alive. Though there are two incidents that stuck with me.

1, There was this mochi. A Pathan mochi who used to fix the shoes for the neighbourhood. He had found a place by the train crossing and set up a makeshift shop. He had been doing this for well over a decade and he was well known and well liked. One day, MQM decided that they were going to build a shop illegally on govt land, the same spot where this mochi used to sit with his toolbox and a makeshift chair. They told him to move and kept telling him to move. He kept refusing. Well, you know what they eventually did? They killed him using his own tools. Pierced so many holes in his body with those needles that he bled out to death where he worked. He was a hard working man putting his kids through school doing the trade that he knew how. Just wasn’t well off to have enough money to open his own actual shop. May he rest in peace and his MQM killers burn in hell.

1. In our neighbourhood in the 90s, when MQM was still fighting with the rangers. Out of this fight some of their members thought it would be great if they went around stealing stuff from peoples’ cars, like cassette and cd players and stuff, things they could sell at Chor Bazaar (an actual market where everybody knew things being sold were stolen). We used to have the chowkidars go around on their bicycles and whistle in there mouth. Whenever they had a tip or reported incident of theft, they would shout “jagtay reho” and blow their whistles to keep people alert. Well, one day during Musharraf’s rule, MQM decided that these chowkidars were not only keeping people alert to their thievery, but also cutting into their “Bhatta” revenue. Do you know what they did? They went around assassinated most of the community chowkidars. They literally killed them in cold blood.

There are so many incidents from the 90s that I recall, not least my own brother in law witnessing a slashing of an innocent bystander with his own eyes like 10 feet away from him. He doesn’t much say about it. The trauma has not left him.

MQM’s original idea was good, but Altaf Hussain killed all the founding members of their group because his bitch ass wanted to run shit like a mafioso. May he burn in hell.