KARACHI: Police in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province arrested a teenage girl suspected of stealing motorbikes in Karachi, confirmed an official on Thursday.
The country’s port city, which was once known for political, sectarian and ethnic violence, has witnessed a major surge in street crimes in recent years.
The paramilitary Rangers launched an operation to quell lawlessness in the city in 2013 which led to the arrest of some of Karachi’s most-wanted men.
“We received a complaint from a person that a girl living in the jurisdiction of our police station had sold him a stolen motorbike,” Ghulam Rasool Arbab, station house officer at Baldia Town, told Arab News. “We pretended to be buyers and called her. When she showed up on Wednesday, we arrested her.”
Arbab said the girl identified herself as Samreen alias Meesha and also sold several motorbikes in Hub city located in the neighboring province of Balochistan.
“The girl is a trained biker who rides across the city in male getup,” he continued, adding she was 17-year-old and was in the business of selling motorbikes for the last seven months.
Speaking to Arab News, Chaudhry Arif, an officer of the Anti-Vehicle Lifting Cell, said the girl would be produced in the case of bike-theft which had already been registered against her in a police station in the Clifton neighborhood.
“We are also trying to arrest her male accomplice,” he added.
According to available statistics, street crime incidents in Karachi increased from 39,884 in 2013 to 85,502 in 2022.
The incidents in which the residents of the city lost their motorbikes surged from 18,074 in 2013 to 50,107 in 2022, registering a 177.23 percent increase.
