A reader, Atiq, left a comment on my post about the White Corolla Case and said that he was one of the victims of Ali Mohammad Hajiano. I emailed him asking whether he was interested in doing a guest post about what he had to go through at the hand of this beast and he agreed. Following is the story of Atiq and his wife who were victims at the hand of White Corolla gang. Thankfully they were lucky enough to get away with very little damage compared to some of the other unfortunate victims.
Guest Post: Atiq
In August 2008 I was living in a rented upper portion in DHA, Phase V on Street 13 off Kh-Muhafiz, where my wife and myself, both 30 year old professionals, lived. The landlord, his wife and three kids lived in the lower portion. There were no servants or guards that lived in the house.
On the night of the 9th or 10th of August me and my wife were returning home from a friends wedding. On the way home we crossed Marina Club and I pointed out to my wife how silly it was for families and couples to be parked at the waterfront at such a late hour with no lights on. As far as I was concerned these people were just looking for trouble and setting themselves up to get robbed.
It was about half past midnight when we got to our gate, and oddly enough we had electricity in the area. I stopped the car in front of the gate, but left the engine running. I got out of the car and walked the six or seven steps to the gate. I'd already fully opened the gate and was walking back to the car when a white corolla pulled up, the driver window opened and a pistol pointed at me. The driver was the animal that has now been identified as Ali Hajiano.
When I saw the pistol, the first thought that went through my mind was "oh shit" and I quickly thought of the things I was likely to lose - my wallet, my cell phone (a Nokia N91), my wife's cell phone (a brand new HTC Touch) and maybe, possibly, my car, a silver Vitz. Both cell phones were in one front pocket of my pants, and my wallet was in my back pocket. As we were coming back from a wedding, I was wearing a suit with a tie and my wife was wearing fancy clothes, but no jewelry apart from her wedding ring. I expected a robbery lasting one minute or less, and anticipated giving my cell and wallet away and then seeing the car drive off in a quick rush. In my mind I quickly wondered if I could somehow keep the HTC Touch hidden as it was really slim and not very visible, and decided that I would at least try. The thought of losing my life entered my mind for just a second so I said a quick Kalima and asked Allah to forgive my sins -just in case. Once that was done, losing my life didn't really worry me all that much.
Hard to believe that so many thought went through my mind in two seconds, but thats exactly what happened as I stood staring at the pistol staring back. The situation on the ground was that the house gate was open and a bit of a triangle had formed. I was standing directly in front of the gate with my back towards the house. The white corolla was about 8 feet away, a little to the left. My own car was about 6 feet away on my right. Both the cars had about 10 feet between them. A quick calculation told me that I had no chance of running to my car, getting in and driving off without being shot dead.
Ali Hajiano again waved the pistol at me and asked me to approach him. His conversation was in Urdu, but I'll translate it for the ease of the reader. He simply said "empty out everything" at which I reached into my back pocket, grabbed my wallet and handed it over to him. Without being asked I also put my hand into my left pocket and took out my Nokia N91, but was careful to leave the HTC Touch untouched. He took my wallet and put it on his dashboard, had a look at my Nokia and handed it back to me saying "you can keep this". I guess it wasn't up to his standard. Deciding to act unafraid, I asked him if I could have my NIC and driving license back if he didn't need it. He asked me how much money was in the wallet, I replied that I wasn't sure but around two or three thousand. He looked through the wallet, took out all the cash and then handed the wallet back to me. I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that I'd gotten off easy and cheap.
I turned to walk away when Hajiano said "Not so fast, slowly walk to your car and sit inside". Oh shit I thought, this isn't over yet. I went and sat in the car and told my wife to stay calm. Hajiano came over to my side and pointed the pistol at me again. His bitch, who we now know as the mechanic Umair, walked around the car to stand at the passenger side window where my wife sat. They again asked us for valuables but we didn't have any so we told them that. My wife had dropped her wedding ring on the car floor, and her cell was in my pocket but not visible. Umair started checking the various compartments of the car on the passenger side while Hajiano started to check the compartments on my side. When he patted the pocket with both the mobiles he asked me what was in the pocket. I told him it was my mobile and took out the N91, again leaving the HTC inside. I handed it over to him and said, "I already told you I only have this mobile, you can have it".
He took the mobile, highly annoyed, and threw it as far as he could down the road saying "what am I supposed to do with this?" They could not understand how we were dressed for a wedding but had didnt have any jewelry. I explained to him how we'd been robbed a month before and lost all our jewelry.
Hajiano asked what valuables we had in the house and I assume he meant to ask about jewels and cash. My wife didn't understand and started to tell him about the TV, VCR, DVD player, Fridge, AC etc. That was actually amusing. He asked again, this time specifying that he was asking about cash and gold. I told him that we didn't have anything like that in the house, but if he wanted he could take the house key, go inside and take whatever he wanted. In the meantime Umair tried to grab my wife's hand and feet to check for gold. She started shouting and slapping his hand which made him a bit apprehensive so he stood back. Hajiano then said that he'd go up to the house to check for valuables but he wanted to take my wife upstairs to show him where they were. I had never heard about the white corolla case till that time so I was a bit startled. I assumed it was just to threaten me, I had no idea that he was really a rapist. But even then I knew fully well what
animals men become when alone with a woman so I absolutely put my foot down.
I told Hajiano "She's not going anywhere. You can take the house keys and go upstairs yourself. If you want the car, you can take the keys and we'll just walk away. If you want money, we'll go to the ATM and give you money". He tried to negotiate with her to go upstairs again and again but I held my ground. Finally he got irritated and told Umair "take the girl out" then he said to me "We're taking the girl, when you have money you can contact us". Umair said "Now we'll take the girl and you can go lodge an FIR"
This was fast turning into a nightmare. My mind suddenly flooded with ideas and thoughts about what I should do. Should I let them go easily and then try to follow them? No way. If I let them take her, I should just as well go upstairs and go to sleep and forget that I ever had a wife. There was no way I was going to let them take her. At the same time I remember clearly praying to God "God, if this is a test or a punishment, I'm sorry for my mistakes, please stop this right now". I grabbed my wife's hand and said "dont go", then I turned around to Hajiano and said "She's not going anywhere".
Umair had by this time told my wife to get out of the car. When she refused he showed her the gun and said "It's real" and then just to drive the point home he took out the magazine and showed her the bullets. She refused to budge so he grabbed her hand and started pulling her out physically. Hajiano started thrusting the pistol in my face and screaming "I'll blow your brains out, you want to die?" I turned to Hajiano and said "Don't do this, we've given you everything, we don't have anything else, if you want you can follow us to the ATM, I can give you another 20,000 . He replied by telling me to shut up and smacking the revolver on the back of my head.
I'm a pretty big guy, 5 Œ10 in height and 100 kg in weight. He probably felt he needed to subdue me so he started hitting me repeatedly on the head and neck with the pistol butt. Some hits were bearable big thuds, but at time when the metal hit my skull I would see stars. While I was getting smashed on the head Umair kept trying to pull my wife out. Thankfully she was resisting and kept telling him to let go in a loud voice, but not a scream. He realized he was not strong enough to pull her out with one hand so he passed his pistol over the roof of the car to Hajiano and then grabbed her wrist with both his hands. At that moment my blood started to curl and desperation set in as the adrenaline rushed and pumped. I thought about smashing the door open and hoped it would knock Hajiano down long enough for me to overpower him. But the constant pistol butt blows to my head kept that thought from evolving into anything concrete.
Umair had by now managed to pull my wife out of the car and was dragging her to the back of the car to put her in the corolla. My wife realized that Umair was without a pistol and at that point she stopped talking loudly and started screaming. Thank God she was in her senses and did just the right thing. Along with screaming she sat down on the road to make it harder for Umair to drag her. Sensing that things were not going smoothly Hajiano started to yell at him to hurry up. Then he sensed that things we're getting out of control so he gave an extra hard blow of the pistol butt to the back of my head. That hit actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it hit me so hard that my head flew forwards and hit the steering wheel, causing the horn to blare. I realized the value immediately and the next time he hit me I again banged my head into the horn, this time on purpose - He stopped hitting me immediately and instead shoved the pistol barrel
on to my temple.
Hajiano knew the horns and the screams would attract attention. He stepped backwards till he reached and sat down in his car but kept the pistol pointed at me and screamed at Umair to hurry up. I realized that he was gone so I raised my head and looked in the passenger side rear view mirror to see my wife sitting on the road, pulling herself away while Umair tried to drag her to the corolla. At that point in time I decided that there was no way in hell that I was going to let my wife go while I was alive. The car was still on and I decided that if Umair managed to drag my wife to the back of the car I would put the car in reverse and run him over. I realized that possibly my wife would get run over too but I thought that it was a better option for me to run her over and take a chance on killing her than to let her be taken, assaulted and then killed for sure. I also realized that Hajiano had his gun pointed at me but I figured that at ten feet I at least had a chance. My mind replayed the course of events that I wanted to do - reverse car, run over Umair, put car in first gear, point car at corolla and ram him as hard as possible. In my mind I was hoping this would give my wife enough time to run away while taking away Hajiano's ability to chase her in a car. I also hoped that if I rammed his car hard enough and survived, I might dazzle him long enough to get out of my car and attack him myself.
While these thoughts played in my mind, my wife kept screaming loudly. Umair had managed to pull her to the back tyre. It was almost time to put the car in reverse and risk both her and my life. La-ila-ha-ill-Allah… and just then the miracle happened. Hajiano screamed to Umair "Let her go, lets go! Quickly!" He must have decided that the encounter had lasted too long, and too much noise had been made. Umair was only too happy to hear the order, he let go of her immediately and ran to the corolla. My wife got up just as quickly and came back into the car, sat on the front passenger side and locked her door. Hajiano screamed at us to keep our heads down. I told my wife to keep as far down as she could, and bent over, but in a way that I could see out as well. I saw the corolla drive by and quickly sat up. I tried to read the number plate but couldn't.
I put the car in gear, just incase they came back and I needed to race off but they didn't. When I saw their car lights leave the street I quickly put the car into the porch and locked the gates. We ran into the house and locked the doors. I left my wife upstairs and told her to keep the doors locked no matter what. Then I ran downstairs, checked left and right from the gate and ran over to where my mobile had been thrown. Picked it up and ran upstairs again, making sure to lock the gates and doors on the way.
We didn't bother reporting the matter to the police. One of my wife's poorer distant relatives was a police constable in Karachi and we told him. He replied that the attackers could have been policemen themselves. We'd also heard enough tales of policemen turning thugs at night and of policemen that took money from thugs to give them information. Our friends warned us that telling the police would invite even more trouble. Over the next few days we started hearing more stories of the white corolla. Whenever they were mentioned people would tell their own stories or stories of people that they knew. That's the first time I realized that the white corolla people were notoriously well known in Karachi.
But I'm thankful to God that I was spared the agony that other men and women have faced. I also learnt some lessons. Never take things for granted. Never believe that something horrible wont happen to you because it only happens to people in newspapers. Never give up on things you believe in, fight and take a stand because that's the only hope you have in hell of surviving when the shit hits the fan. Putting up a resistance saved my marriage, my wife and my life. In a nutshell, I truly believe now more than ever that you have to stand your ground and fight for things that matter that it's better to die like a man than to live like a coward.
As far as Hajiano, his father and Umair are concerned, I've made my views clear. Publicly castrate them, slowly. Inject acid into them. Drag them around Karachi naked and tied to the back of the same corolla. Have them raped by donkeys. Put Red ants up their asses. Hammer nails into their eyes. Torture them in the most degrading and chillingly painful ways possible and make such an example of them that the world remembers. They should never be killed, instead the three of them should be tortured every single day for the rest of their lives. My heart bleeds for the poor women that were unfortunate enough not to get away. Their loss can not be replaced but by making a public example of these animals we can hopefully reduce the number of times such a crime is repeated.
And if these animals are ever released, I swear to God I will personally join, hire and train taliban and help them to kill the judges, policemen and politicians involved
--
Omar Javaid
Sr. Editor
CRITIC MAG
No comments:
Post a Comment
Use of any abusive or inappropriate language will give us a reason to delete your comment.