(Karachi) In the teeming megalopolis of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, cemeteries are overflowing and the dead lack space to rest in peace.
Posted at 5:07 p.m.
But for the right amount of money, given to the right person, a claim can be “found” for a loved one by rogue gangs who demolish old graves to make way for new ones.
In the sprawling coastal city (South), which is home to 20 million inhabitants, the cemetery of the privileged district of Pechs has been officially complete for five years.
This large urban cemetery is crowded with graves. Small or large, they are built into each other, in every corner, similar to Tetris pieces; some are dug on the ground, others raised on a stone base.
Despite the lack of space, new graves are constantly appearing, erected on old graves demolished by unscrupulous individuals charging staggering amounts.
AFP reporters saw a group crushing a grave and stealthily carrying the debris in baskets until enough space to build a new one had been cleared.
“There is no place in all of Karachi,” said one such man, Khalil Ahmed. “We have to destroy old graves if we want to build new ones.”
The price fixed by the administration for a funeral is 7900 rupees (40 euros). But two residents reported having paid 55,000 and 175,000 rupees last year to bury relatives in the same cemetery.
According to Khalil, the money is shared between around 40 men and teenagers who, when not working, lounge on benches in the shade.
“The Gravedigger Mafia”
With his cronies, he is part of what the political class and the media call the “mafia of gravediggers”.
The word mafia is used in all sauces in Pakistan. We complain about the “milk mafia” which mixes water with milk, the “sugar mafia” which drives up prices, the “earth mafia” which monopolizes land.
Gravediggers are taking advantage of the country’s population growth. Pakistan is the 5and most populous in the world, with 220 million inhabitants, and its population increases by four million people every year. This increase is accompanied by a strong rural exodus.
Muhammad Aslam, 72, has seen the gravedigger mafia thrive with Karachi’s population boom. When he settled right next to the Pechs cemetery in 1953, it was still only a “deserted place”.
But “the place quickly ran out” and the price of funerals has continued to increase over the years.
In 1967, his family had paid 50 rupees to bury his grandfather. A relative buried by the mafia in 2020 cost 33,000.
“The basic problem is that the infrastructure is insufficient,” acknowledges Ali Hassan Sajid, a spokesman for the municipality.
It manages 39 of the approximately 250 cemeteries in Karachi, including that of Pechs. Six of them are closed and the others are “almost full”.
“In some parts of the city, the infrastructure is the same as it was when Pakistan was founded” in 1947, admits Mr. Sajid.
He admits that the mafia continues to carry out burials in normally closed cemeteries, but assures that the municipality is trying to put an end to this practice.
“The Last Trace”
The underworld also imposes its law on the cemeteries of Rawalpindi, Peshawar or Lahore, according to the local press.
Views on the mafia vary depending on who you talk to. For Mr. Sajid, families who want to bury their loved ones at all costs with their elders are ready to pay sums that “bait the gravedigger to make him succumb to his greed”.
Khalil, on the other hand, believes he is providing an essential service and earning only a meager income from it.
While some are comfortable with this practice, considering that it is the same with life in such a city, for others it is a source of anxiety.
Muhammad Abdullah Saif’s father was buried in Pechs Cemetery decades ago. Today, the decayed grave is surrounded by empty cement bags and gravestone shards.
The Mafia usually goes after unmaintained graves. “We have to come regularly, otherwise the tomb will be destroyed,” said Ms. Saif.
Muzammil Asif has to walk over bumpy ground, at the risk of spraining himself, to reach the grave of his younger sister, who died last summer. “Graves are desecrated when you step on them,” he despairs.
At the cemetery near Korangi, Muhammad Munir suffered the cruellest of losses. Every year he comes to the place where his father was buried: an amphitheater of ruined tombs, lined with threadbare flags.
But her father’s grave is long gone. It was demolished more than 20 years ago and replaced by another, which itself disappeared to make way for a new one.
Some years, when Mr. Munir goes there, he discovers recent graves, bearing unknown names. Now he doesn’t quite know where his father lies. “It’s painful,” he said. “His grave was the last trace of him.”