Chasing a ‘black spot’ cost engineer Aiman Javed and his driver Ishaq Panwar their lives in a narrow alley in Karachi’s Machhar Colony last month after a mob mistook them for kidney-stealing children kidnappers.

In the telecommunications world, a black spot is an area of poor or no cellular coverage. Javed and Panwar worked for Netkom, a maintenance company, which works as a third-party contractor for major telecom companies. That day, October 28, the two men were tasked with finding a black spot in one part of Machhar Colony from where complaints had been received.

They drove up and down the area that was identified as a black spot in the informal settlement. They used a white company car but it did not have any logo. The car had Islamabad number plates because Netkom is headquartered in the capital.

“It was their constant back and forth in a congested alley, chasing the black spot, asking two school children about a possible exit that made them suspicious in the eyes of the locals,” SSP Keamari, Fida Janwari told Aaj News. “The discovery of a medical aid kit box containing scissors, cotton gauze and Pyodine,” gave credence to the people’s suspicion that the two men were scouting out children to kidnap, the SSP went on to add. Police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon made a similar statement about the first aid kit before the Sindh cabinet a few days ago.

The pesh imam of the nearby mosque and madrassa, Muhammad Tahir, was asleep at around 10:15am when one of his students woke him up saying that they were trouble in the street

Chasing and identifying telecommunication black spots was Javed’s daily work along other colleagues whose job is to find them and report them back to their office for rectification to be carried out by other teams. Sometimes the men have to roam up and down a single street half a dozen times as they try to nail down the exact location. If they stopped to ask first one and then a second child where the exit to the dead-end alley was, people would have grown suspicious.

1. First story: Karachi mob beats two telecom workers to death over suspicion
2. Second story: Machhar Colony lynching suspects remanded to police custody for eight days
3. Third story: Machhar Colony mob was confused by ‘pyodine’: police chief

The pesh imam of the nearby mosque and madrassa, Muhammad Tahir, was asleep at around 10:15am when one of his students woke him up saying that they were trouble in the street. “I was a bit angry at the men at first since they didn’t have proper company identification,” he told Aaj News over the phone. “I talked to some person named Wasif at their office on Aiman’s phone, advising them to call the Docks police station to extract their team as the mob was getting bigger and bigger.”

The office called a second team which happened to be working in the field nearby, according to the police. “I had offered the two men to come inside,” said the pesh imam.

The pesh imam, who was vilified on social media for allegedly instigating the lynching, had in fact tried his best to help the two men

He had hoped to try to sort out the matter with the locals, but Aiman and the driver did not want to leave their company car outside. As the two men attempted to reverse their vehicle out of the alley, they were stopped by the mob of around 200 to 250 men.

Two policemen posted with a polio team working in the neighborhood reached the scene and tried to disperse the mob by aerial firing. But this just made it worse and the frenzied people attacked and injured one of the policemen. The other policeman called Docks police station’s SHO who rushed to the spot but by the time reinforcements arrived it was too late.

• Rs5m in compensation for each victim
• Victims from Thatta and Naushahro Feroze
• 4 suspects in custody for eight days, next hearing Nov 8
• 15 people identified through video footage

The pesh imam, who was vilified on social media for allegedly instigating the lynching, had in fact tried his best to help the two men, the police have said. Muhammad Tahir was initially detained for questioning but was later released after his statement was corroborated by the company official.

So far police claimed to have arrested 18 suspects and are conducting raids to arrest more suspects.

Aaj News made several unsuccessful attempts to contact Netkom’s general manager for comment. Staff from the same company had faced a similar situation a few months ago in Korangi but a second team which was working nearby reached the spot and managed to avert a disaster, said SSP Janwari quoting the company official. Ironically, the company didn’t learn any lesson from the Korangi episode and kept sending staff into difficult neighbourhoods in unmarked cars.

The writer is an investigative reporter