Interactive: Killings sweep Karachi

Wracked by political violence and crime, Pakistan’s largest city is the world’s most dangerous megacity.

Karachi interactive

How to use this interactive

Our interactive illustrates homicide data for the years 2011 and 2012, broken down by police station, letting you explore a map of the city’s violence. Each red/blue circle represents a police station, and the number within it is the number of homicides which occurred within its remit. Click on the circle to see detailed data for each police district.

The default view shows you the city’s most dangerous districts. To get deeper into the data, click on the arrow in the top right corner. From there, you can explore the Detailed Homicide Data tab, which will show you all of the city’s police stations, as well as administrative and electoral maps of the city.

More on Karachi’s violence from Asad Hashim
 
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Of particular note is how homicides are clustered around certain areas in the city’s central and south zones – both key battlegrounds and strongholds for political parties and criminal gangs. The levels of violence in certain areas are staggering, however: the Pirabad police station, for example, registered 140 murder cases between January 1, 2011 and August 31, 2012 – that is more cases than were registered in the entire city of London, the capital of the United Kingdom, in 2011.

Pirabad is located in Orangi Town, a key site of contestation between the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP), as well an area where there is a high degree of activity in the informal land sector. Other notably dangerous districts, such as Orangi Town (116 homicides), Baldia Town (103) and Kala Kot (66) also correspond to such sites of political contestation.

Much of Karachi’s violence is linked to political parties: click on the sliding menu at the bottom of the interactive to see homicide data broken down by political party.

Finally, this is a living document – it is currently updated with figures from January 1, 2011, to August 31, 2012, and will be continually updated to reflect the city’s ongoing bouts of political and other violence. All data is gathered through the  Citizens-Police Liasion Committee (CPLC) , a watchdog organisation that works closely with Karachi’s police and the provincial government. 

If you have trouble viewing the interactive, please upgrade your browser to the latest version available. This interactive has been optimised for viewing in  Mozilla Firefox  and  Google Chrome .

Follow Asad Hashim on Twitter: @AsadHashim

Design Contributor: Alia Chughtai ( @AliaChughtai )

Source: Al Jazeera