An alarming increase in the dumping of corpses by the roadside in different parts of the city has been witnessed this year, said police and rescue workers.| Perhaps because there's no room in the mortuary... |
| Jute at least was biodegradable. Have these people no concern for the environment? |
While the killings and the subsequent dumping of bodies became more frequent during the bouts of political or ethnic violence, their occurrence did not stop even during relatively peaceful days, law-enforcement officials said.
According to police records, 1,241 people were killed during the last seven months in the city, while last year the metropolis had witnessed a total of 1,339 killings.
"Yes, there is a sharp surge in the number of bodies being found every day in the city," said Anwer Kazmi, a bigwig of the Edhi Foundation. He added the occurrence had increased many times this year.
Initially these bodies remained unidentified but once legal formalities were completed they were shifted to the Edhi morgue where families turned up and identified the bodies of their loved ones in most cases, he explained.
The senior functionary of the country`s largest charity said: "On a daily average, two bodies were found lying abandoned in different parts of the city this year."
The last month, however, was an exception with more than 300 killings in different localities of the metropolis, he added.
Mr Kazmi said the morgue mostly remained full to capacity these days, bearing evidence of the recent rise in the number of bodies found stuffed in gunny bags and dumped by the roadside.
A rescue worker said that most of the bodies found stuffed in gunny bags bore torture marks or a gunshot wound. "It has been noticed that the bodies recovered from gunny bags often had a single bullet in the head that caused the death," said a medico-legal officer of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.
Ramzan Chippa, the patron of what can be described as the city's second largest ambulance network, also acknowledged the fact that the phenomenon had increased sharply during the current year. The number of bodies being found in the city had increased in recent months, he said.