Going Number Two

 The case of Anmol ‘Pinky’ was lurid enough, but it turned political when she claimed in a Karachi magistrate’s court that she was being forced to say that she supplied her product to Banigala. I suppose she is a PTI supporter.

The PTI has not yet taken a public stance that cocaine should be legalized, and that its medicinal use should be allowed. However, party founder Imran Khan is supposed to be a cokehead. If so, he would be pleased to know that Pinky’s case reveals that the country is producing its own cocaine. However, another version of events is that the only local content is the chemical with which she cuts the coke.

At the same time, that is dangerous. For one of the charges against her is murder, because one user died after using her brand, which comes with a sticker on it giving her address and phone number.

Indeed, the sticker helped the Karachi police find her. It’s being said that she was pursued because of the deaths of children of prominent persons, which led to the crackdown. Otherwise, she kept the police ‘happy.’

She does seem to have a thing for lawmen. I mean, her first husband, the one who is supposed to have initiated her in the art of manufacture, was a lawyer. Her current husband is a retired police officer.

You might get an idea of the scale on which she was operating by the list of people she employed: riders, manufacturers ans suppliers are all very well, but managers. Now imagine a couple of MBAs (who take all or part of their salary in product) handling all the rest. I wonder if she had an office somewhere for all of them, and sat in a revolving chair behind a big desk.

Apart from Banigala and Imran, someone also has it in for the Vehari Police, whose DPO says it is an indefatigable combatant against drugs of all kinds. The Karachi police claims she said there was a Vehari branch in her network, something the DPO Vehari strenuously denies. Do I smell some inter-police force rivalry at work? After all, it has been reported that she was arrested in Lahore initially, but then let go, against the standard payment. Maybe the Karachi cops are trawling for a cut, and can’t tell the difference between Lahore and Vehari.

The recent controversy over Imran Khan’s eye raises a fresh question. Are PTII officebearers allowed to have two sound eyes? Or are they obliged to have them torn out? So that when Imran finally emerges to lead the PTI faithful to the Millennium, the saying “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’ can finally come true.

Imran may have troubles at home. With KP CM expanding his Cabinet beyond the limit in Article 130 of the Constitution. When a CM expands his Cabinet, that usually means he is having difficulties managing the parliamentary party. But why would the PTI have problems?

Resistance to Imran seems to have died down among the cricketers, with Pakistan Test captain Shan Masood making sure that, whoever makes it on to the same page instead of Imran, it won’t be him.  In the first Test, he made it three consecutive losses to Bangladesh, making 3 after his countpart, Najmul Hasan Shanto, followed his first-innings century with a fifty. He got another fifty in the first innings, to add to the century scored by the keeper, Liton Das. The Pakistani keeper, Rizwan, got 13. Pakistan conceded a lead of 46 in the first innings, which is like the 1st Test. At the end of the second day, Bangladesh had a lead of 156, and it seemed that they were heading towards another clean sweep.

Meanwhile, Trump and Nigeria have claimed the killing of the ISIS Number Two. Is it a repeat of the game we grew accustomed to, when there were periodic claims that the Al-Qaeda Number Three had been killed? Now that was a dangerous job: Number Two was always left unharmed, as was Number Four.  Well, let’s see if the Number Two is killed again.