A papad vendor was tortured and killed in Pattoki, Kasur in Punjab by a group of wedding guests who believed that the man was a pickpocket, police reported.
Police said that Ashraf Sultan, a papad vendor, was brutally beaten to death by wedding guests who assumed he was trying to rob them. Police said the wedding guests left the man’s dead body on the floor inside the wedding hall as they continued with their dinner and festivities.
Police arrested the wedding hall manager. Inspector General (IG) Punjab also ordered further enquiry of the incident from the RPO Sheikhupura.
Street vending is a common, if precarious, livelihood for many of Pakistan’s poor. In 2020, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Centre of Street Economy (CSE) and Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Division drafted a bill to regularize and safeguard the rights of street vendors.
PIDE conducted a survey of street vendors in Islamabad’s G-9 Markaz, which found that 90 per cent of street vendors were migrants from poor, rural backgrounds, aged between the ages of 18 to 50; approximately 30 per cent were completely illiterate; and the majority lived in close proximity to their workplace.
Furthermore, the study found that “tradesmen are generally perceived as ‘rude’, ‘filthy’, ‘dangerous’, contributing to ‘congestion’, and so on: all justifications advanced by elite interests, prompting authorities to clamp down, destroy stalls, and confiscate equipment.”