Bushra Zaidi accident .

That day I was with my  my friend (Late) Mazher Ul Huq Ansari.Went to urdu bazar to buy some books .We were standing in front of Cafe Lazat (Now its Makka tiles shop ) .
I saw the mob of students who were hurling stones to buses,I too try to pick one stone 
but my bad luck  few police men appeared  from nowhere and start hitting me badly ,Mazher shouted to run ,
I try to escape but once again one other police man caught me and tried to bang my head to the wall .
My luck that i slipped from his hands and start running badly to get in the underground market ,That too was a mistake because due to teargas the underground market become hell for us . At last we get out and reached to patrol pump and after taking some water and few minute rest we moved back to home .
In evening news i learned that a young student of Sir Syed Girls College was killed by 
mini  bus (We use to call those buses yellow devils ) .After ward the the bus was set 
on fire publicly by students but driver fled away from the scene .

That was a turning point of the history of Karachi .(To be continue )

Bushra Zaidi.

Her name launched a thousand protests and forever altered the city’s history. This is not to belittle the daily toil of our homemakers, nurses, architects, CEOs – women who contribute to Karachi just as much as any of its residents. But for International Women’s Day, we thought we would remember Bushra, the 20-year-old Sir Syed Girls College student, whose death in a traffic accident on April 15, 1985 was a turning point in the lives of everyone who has lived and will live in Karachi.

Twenty-seven years have passed, but Abdul Qayyum, who works as a clerk at the sports department at the college in Nazimabad, still has fresh memories of the day she died. “There were two N-1 minibuses racing and one of the bus drivers couldn’t apply the brakes in time,” he told The Express Tribune. Such is collective memory that many people believe that Bushra was killed while alighting from the bus and not as a result of being hit by one. Daily Dawn reported that the bus had knocked over a group of students, and three others were injured along with Najma.

According to Qayyum, Bushra and her sister Najma were crossing Nawab Siddiq Ali Khan Road at the time. Najma was badly injured – her leg was reportedly fractured – but Bushra was killed. Her body was taken to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital before the college staff arrived at the scene. They arranged a car for Najma to be taken to the hospital.

“The students of the Sir Syed Girls College tried to protest but [Professor Atiqa] Baig – the principal at the time – closed the college gates,” recalled Qayyum. “The girls forced their way out and were joined by female protesters from the nearby Usmania College and adjacent Government Degree College for Women, Nazimabad.” They gathered at Golimaar Chowrangi and boys from colleges in the vicinity also joined them. The boys toppled and then torched the bus.

The state responded. The police first lathi-charged the protesters and then unleashed an intense bout of teargas. The shells fell inside Sir Syed Girls College and even inside an ambulance. Dawnreported that four people were wounded by bullets and pellets, 80 were taken to hospital. It was so bad that the people living in Nazimabad had to keep buckets of water to counter the effects of the tear gas.

Students boycotted classes, put up barricades and pulled down hoardings. Dawn described scenes of total panic in Nazimabad and Liaquatabad, where the protests spread, and educational institutions were shut down for three days. The curfew was lifted for a few hours in select areas so people could buy food.

The ire of the protesters inevitably turned on the transporters. This sector was dominated by Pathans and this is what people have generally come to believe was the bus driver’s background. This has been cited in several books and research. Here too there is a discrepancy in the story and confusion. According to Ghous Ali Shah, who was the chief minister in 1985, the man who was caught and tried in a sessions court for his role in the accident, was originally from Azad Kashmir. And then, according to the president of Karachi Transport Ittehad, Irshad Hussain Shah Bukhari, the crime was committed by a Punjabi-speaking driver, who later spent 10 years in jail, and not a Pakhtun.

Nonetheless, Bushra’s death precipitated ethnic riots and violence. A week on, the toll reached 50 with 300 people injured, according to an account by the Associated Press (AP) news agency at the time. “Every ten minutes someone is being brought to the hospital with gunshot wounds,” AP was told by a local reporter for the second day of the riots.

Ghous Ali Shah ordered an investigation. The IG of police at the time was Agha Saadat Ali Shah, who is now dead. The investigating officer of the case, SSP Munawar Ali, died in 2006. Bushra Zaidi’s family, who had no political affiliation, are believed to have left the city and have not been heard from since the mid-1990s. Her father was reportedly working in Oman when his daughter was killed, and flew back.

And thus, as we look back, nearly three decades on, we see that, in some ways, Bushra Zaidi is the only woman who matters for Karachi.