KARACHI: A kidnapping and torture case has been registered against Railway Police officials on the complaint of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) City Wardens Director Saim Imran, who has accused them of abducting him and taking him to an undisclosed location, where he was allegedly tortured. The Railway Police kidnapping case was registered at Shahrah-i-Faisal police station on the KMC’s complaint.
The development comes amid a dispute between Pakistan Railways (PR) police and KMC City Wardens over a road project aimed at easing traffic congestion in the city. The confrontation threatens to disrupt construction weeks before its scheduled completion.
According to the FIR, Imran said a road had been under construction from Natha Khan to Pehlwan Goth for the past four months and that he was on traffic management duty at the site on the day of the incident. He alleged that Cantt police station SHO Ahsan Rasheed arrived at the site with other police personnel and assaulted him.
The alleged abduction
The complainant further alleged that he was taken to an undisclosed location, where he was tortured. He claimed that he was asked to hold the feet of senior officers and lick their shoes on their instructions. He was subjected to further torture after refusing to comply, according to the FIR.
Imran added that he lost consciousness due to the alleged torture and regained consciousness at Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
The incident unfolded on Sunday afternoon when railway police officials intervened at the construction site and stopped the work, prompting the chief of KMC City Wardens to arrive at the site. The two sides initially engaged in a heated exchange over the construction, which soon escalated into a physical scuffle. The KMC alleged that the railways police personnel severely beat the City Wardens director before taking him to a Pakistan Railways police station.
Land dispute at the heart of it
A PR official said the land where the road was being constructed belonged to the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) and that the dispute arose over construction activity on railway land. He added that railway authorities were collecting information about the incident and would determine the next course of action in accordance with the law once all relevant details had been gathered.
The controversy centres on a dual carriageway linking Natha Khan Bridge with Pehlwan Goth and Habib University, running parallel to Chakor Nullah. Valued at around Rs780 million, the project is expected to ease pressure on Sharea Faisal, Rashid Minhas Road, Dalmia Road and Gulistan-i-Jauhar, some of Karachi’s busiest corridors.
The KMC expressed strong resentment, questioning why the railways had raised objections so late, putting a multi-million-rupee public welfare project at risk just weeks before its completion. The KMC spokesman rejected the railways’ claim and said the municipal body had fulfilled all legal requirements before launching the project more than two months ago.
“This is not correct,” he said, responding to the railways’ claim over land ownership. “”This is a major project in terms of benefits it will bring to the people and any move to undermine its potential or put it at risk would be detrimental to the interests of Karachi’s residents.”
Both sides’ accounts of the dispute were reported by Dawn on Monday.”
Karachi’s strained corridors
The standoff adds to a long list of pressures on Karachi’s transport system. Feature Pakistan reported this month that the Red Line BRT project’s second lot would not be completed before June 2028, leaving commuters on the same eastern corridors the new dual carriageway is meant to relieve. The city’s roads have also carried a heavy human cost: Karachi’s SMBB Trauma Centre has recorded more than 328,000 road-accident cases over the past decade.
Any halt to the Natha Khan–Pehlwan Goth project would keep that burden on Sharea Faisal and Rashid Minhas Road for months longer. KMC officials said senior municipal officers were in contact with the railways authorities and expressed the hope that the matter would be resolved soon.
The episode also underlines why FIR registration matters to citizens. Punjab recently launched 33 mobile police stations with FIR registration services to speed up incident reporting, and the same week saw customs authorities at Karachi airport seize smuggled medicines, another reminder of how stretched the city’s enforcement machinery is.
Meanwhile, the FIR against the railway police officials means the dispute now has a criminal dimension as well, with both the land question and the alleged assault likely to be tested before investigators.
