Every morning when I pick up the newspapers, I wonder if I will find a particular news, datelined Karachi, that is reported rather infrequently – once a fortnight or a month.
The suspense lingers for a little while because it does not make the outer pages. In fact, it is surreptitiously buried in the inside or city pages. And it is invariably a very brief and single-column snippet.
What could it be? Besides, how could a news that reports a happening or an event be a repetition of what had been reported earlier? Only statements made by high officials and political leaders make big headlines even when they are exact repetitions of what had been said earlier.
This means that I need to be more explicit about what I am saying. So, here is an example of what I found in a newspaper on Thursday. A suspected thief was lynched by a mob near Tariq Road the previous evening. Reportedly, the “suspect had barged into a house near the Noorani Kabab intersection to steal some valuable item”.
Obviously, he was caught by the people who started beating him. He died on the spot. After his body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, the police surgeon said that the suspected thief, aged between 25 and 30 years, bore injuries with multiple fractures and open wounds.
I would admit that this is not such an important incident, considering what else is happening in the country, including within the ambit of violent crime. Yes, an alarming increase in........