A GROUP of miserable human beings, two men, two women and a few children, some squatting, some stretched out forlornly on ragged, unspeakably dirty tatters which were once some kind of bedclothes was the unusual sight right in front of the Pakistan Prime Minister`s residence on fashionable Victoria Road, Karachi... . I walked up to them to investigate and heard a long story which, in short, was this.

Some months ago these people set out on the long trek from Patiala to Pakistan. `One lakh Muslims in our kafila were killed on the way,` said a woman; maybe she exaggerated, but one got the general idea. ... But these people got away alive and eventually reached Kasur. Nobody took charge of them. They came to Lahore, to be told that there was no room in any of the camps. ... After some days they were told ... to go to Sind. They jumped trains, being many times off-loaded for not having tickets; but eventually got to Hyderabad. `Here we saw many houses empty but we were told that we must get `permit` from Karachi to be allotted some place to live in. So we came here.`Dawn Man About Town