The body of Baber Hameed, 31, a Christian daily wage sanitation worker has been recovered two weeks after he went missing.
He had left home on Sunday 7th May to earn money so his family would not have to go to bed hungry.
He was working in the area of Clifton, Karachi along with his colleagues. According to his colleagues, at around 2 pm he went down into a main sewer to unblock the sewage pipeline. His colleague called him to come out if the job was done, but there was no reply. They got worried and immediately called all the resources they were aware of. Within no time the news spread in the area and people started gathering around. In the meantime, rescue teams also arrived.
The rescue team started their operation to rescue Hameed but after working all day and night, the team couldn’t find him. The rescue operation continued for a week and on 13th May they decided to stop, reaching the conclusion that he might have drowned and due to heavy water pressure his body might have drifted away.
Keeping in view the situation and after several days‘ struggles, the local government’s higher officers team comprising of Mr. Najmi Alam, Arshad Javaid, Mr. Tanveer, police inspector of Clifton police station, and the 1122 rescue team and other people involved in the operation, who worked very hard to find Hameed, reached the difficult decision to stop their operation.
Chaudhry Waris Gulnaz, a social activist, told us that after several days of searching, when Hameed’s body couldn’t be found, there were calls from influential people from Islamabad to continue efforts to find the body of Hameed.
He said the situation was very disheartening, and there were no answers for the family. In the meantime, another team comprising of sanitation workers, Munawar Amjad, Fiaz Riaz, Victor Saleem John, and Kashif Qaiser Paraim got together and decided to start searching again.
The team finally found the body in a main hole 250 meters away from a sewer where Hameed went down. The team members informed all the local government's higher officers about this and requested help to rescue the body.
Finally, Hameed’s body was rescued on 19th May at midnight, something was only possible with the support of the government who had all the machinery and equipment.
Hameed was a young man, who got married in 2020 to Benish Bibi. The couple had no children. His parents had already died some time ago, and he had one brother who is blind. His tragic death is so unfortunate and now there is no one to look after his blind brother and his widow.
Hameed was not a government employee, he was working privately. Unfortunately, Christians are so poor, that sometimes they are forced to take such menial jobs.
