'Laawaris': Sindhi Student Fights for Life in ICU After Joining Protest

Shahbaz Khaskheli, 20, hails from Shahdadpur, a village in Sanghar district, Sindh. He came to Karachi, the provincial capital, to study law. A first-year student at The Millennium Universal College, Shahbaz had chosen Karachi in the hope of receiving a better education. Now, he is fighting for his life in the neuro-trauma unit of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.

His father, advocate Ghulam Asghar Khaskheli, spoke to The Wire at the hospital, his voice heavy with grief. “The police brutally beat my son,” he said. “I want to know why they left him in the hospital as laawaris (abandoned) when his family is alive – when I, his father, am alive.”

For three days, Asghar could not bring himself to see his grievously injured son. A father of eight – four sons and four daughters – he lost two of his sons when they were children. One of his surviving sons is a person with special needs; Shahbaz is the fourth. The girls are all students.

Describing Shahbaz as shy and reserved, Asghar said he had hoped a law degree would help secure his son’s future. Now, as Shahbaz lies unconscious, that future hangs in uncertainty. He has no idea what had happened to his son or if he will ever return to a normal life, Asghar said.

Sindhi students had been protesting against the construction of six canals on the Indus and corporate farming in the province. On April 22, students from Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University of Law, along with members of a student alliance, organised a peaceful march from Teen Talwar to the Karachi Press Club. People from various walks of life joined them.

Muneer Hussain, 23, a final-year law student and chairperson of the university students’ council who helped organise the march, told The Wire that the demonstration might have unsettled powerful quarters. “It disturbed them to see such a large presence of Sindhi students in Karachi – students who can challenge and question the state’s anti-Sindh policies,” he said.

His friend, Qaim Jatoi, also 23 and a fellow organizer and final-year law student, added with a confident smile, “Sindhis and then Bengalis in 1952 have both peacefully challenged the authoritarian Pakistani state.”

Students arrested

The day after the march, on April 23, police officers approached a group of students at a tea shop and questioned them. The students showed their identity cards to confirm they were enrolled at the university. Constable Zaid Gujar, one of the officers who approached them, was quoted by students as telling the group, “Your looks and your behaviour show you are dacoits and robbers.” Moments later, three students were detained. The police told them, “We were looking for you.”

In response, about 60-70 law students gathered outside the Defense Police Station to show solidarity with the detained students and demand their release. Shahbaz was a part of this group of protesters.

Students protesting against the construction of six canals on the Indus and corporate farming. Photo: By arrangement,

According to Qaim, one officer told them, “We’ll teach you a lesson—you’ve given us a headache. Why have you come to Karachi?” A long and heated debate ensued, and the police opened fire, injuring a student who has since returned to his village. Muneer said Zaid Gujar is the one who opened fire. “Because of the police firing, one of the students was injured,” he said.

The three who had been detained were released. On April 24, police filed a First Information Report (FIR) against the students.

Shahbaz missing

Abid Hussain, an advocate and cousin of Shahbaz, realised that Shahbaz was missing and immediately approached the station house officer Asrar Buriro to enquire. The officer denied having any knowledge of Shahbaz’s whereabouts.

Abid told The Wire that after several hours, he returned to the police station and warned the officer, saying: “Even if my cousin has been killed, his body should be returned to the family.”

Within 10 to 15 minutes, SHO Asrar called Abid to tell him where Shahbaz was. Asghar, Shahbaz’s father, asked how the officer, who had earlier claimed to know nothing, was suddenly able to locate his son who had been admitted to the hospital as a laawaris (abandoned person). The ambulance record, Asghar said, listed Shahbaz as laawaris.

Abid said the hospital initially told them it had no patient by the name of Shahbaz. Asked if any unidentified patient was admitted, a doctor confirmed there was one. Abid was only able to recognize his cousin by his hands and feet. “He had critical injuries—head trauma, a gunshot wound, and bruises from iron rods—all of which are documented in the medical records and photographs,” his petition for an FIR states.

Asghar said the police might have assumed that Shahbaz would die from his injuries, and had they could pass off his body as unclaimed, which would have left the family searching for him as a missing person. “But God had other plans and returned our son to us,” he said.

“When we asked for Shahbaz’s medical reports, the doctors made excuses—clearly under pressure. The fact is, the police instructed them to hide the files so they could later fabricate facts,” Asghar said.

The father also questioned the statement of Manisha Ropeta, the police officer assigned to investigate the case, who had told him that Shahbaz was injured because the crowd had stepped on him. Visibly angry, Asghar asked her, “Were people wearing iron shoes? Was the crowd in the millions to cause this kind of damage?”

When The Wire contacted Manisha Ropeta for comment, she did not deny making the statement. She said those were initial findings, and that doctors had confirmed that such injuries could occur due to crowd pressure. Asked how large the crowd was, Ropeta reiterated that her report reflected only preliminary observations. Asked why an FIR had not been registered, she replied that it had been filed and that the investigation would proceed according to it.

12 days for FIR

Abid said the FIR was registered on May 5, 12 days after Shahbaz was reported missing. “I am an advocate, and yet our family had to struggle just to get a basic right—the right to file an FIR,” he told The Wire. “If I, as a lawyer, had to suffer this much, we can only imagine how an ordinary citizen would be treated. Registering an FIR is not a favour from the police—it is a constitutional right. And still they made us suffer for it.”

“I will never forgive those who did this to my son,” Asghar said. “It’s not just about my son, it’s about every other student studying in Karachi.”

Sindhi students

Muneer criticised human rights organisations, the mainstream media and political parties for their silence on Shahbaz’s case. He said he had reached out to a prominent human rights organisation, asking them to raise their voice, but although they saw his message, they never responded. “This indifference is not limited to rights groups,” he said. “None of the political parties, whether Sindhi nationalist or mainstream parliamentary parties, has ever contacted us.”

Qaim criticized the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which claims to support student politics, for not repealing Section 153-B of the Pakistan Penal Code. The law, introduced in 1962, criminalises student political activity that might disrupt public order. “Because of this law, students are punished even on campuses,” he said, alleging that the Sindh government is obstructing justice in Shahbaz’s case.

“It is the state that decides who may march—and who may not,” Muneer said.

Qaim said that Sindhi students are targeted by the state and simultaneously marginalised by Sindhi nationalist political parties. “If these parties truly cared about us, they would not have left us abandoned,” he said. “Sindhi students have energised every political movement, but when we suffer, we suffer alone.”

With quiet bitterness, he asked, “Would a Sindhi or Pashtun police officer ever ask a Punjabi student in Lahore why they came from Sahiwal or Faisalabad to study there?” He paused, then added, “But we, the Sindhi students, are profiled and beaten simply for coming to Karachi.”