No space for dead as Karachi graveyards become swindlers' playgrounds

With Karachi growing out of bounds especially after an unrestricted influx of migrants into the city of lights from all over, the shrinkage of utilities and the space for all its living and its dead have amplified alongside as the cemeteries of a city with roughly 30 million population have turned into swindlers heaven.

ARY News program Bakhabar Savera expanded on how the provincial government of Sindh has not arranged for even a single graveyard for the people while the total 200 designated graveyard spaces across the city, some 48 of which claimed by Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), have exhausted already.

It is reported that the “graveyard mafia” laying siege on cemeteries across Karachi charges people Rs30,000- to 40,000 for finding them a grave space while the official KMC fee for a grave is only Rs9,500.

Since space has run out in the KMC owned cemeteries, the mafia lures new clients by arranging for them a grave by removing old ones and replacing them with the newly sold graves, when the family members don’t visit cemeteries.

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Present in the program segment was welfare organization JDC’s general secretary Zafar Abbas who said there are total 162 graveyards for Muslims in the city which are for the public and are not community-specific, however noting that all of them were exhausted 40 years ago.

Now you will find the gravediggers as wholly and solely responsible for the cemeteries and they act as mafia.

It was said that with no official scrutiny or administration of these cemeteries, the land grabbers did not let go of this sinister opportunity as well and they encroached on graveyard lands to build commercial and residential structures.