THIS file photo shows the Thar Express bringing back passengers from Munabao in India to the Zero Point station on Feb 18, 2006.—AFP

IT is a regular Karachi evening with the usual hustle and bustle even at 11:30pm. But the darkness, the sound of dogs howling and crickets chirping, and a tired police constable blowing his whistle from the confines of his makeshift wooden kiosk in the cantonment railway station make me wonder whether I’m in some remote town.

At some distance from the almost deserted parking lot, a vast area in front of Platforms 7 and 8 is fenced off with rope, and a large number of policemen stand alert. The lone entrance to the fenced area is guarded by three policemen; one of them is trying to convince members of a Bohra family that they cannot go on to the platform to bid farewell to their relatives travelling to Ahmedabad, India, via the Thar Express. This is the train that connects the two nuclear-armed nations via the Zero Point-Munabao rail link that was inaugurated 10 years ago to the day.

Located in front of the main station building, the two platforms and their adjoining areas are for security reasons out of bounds for civilians — except passengers with valid visas, passports and tickets, and a few porters — every Friday and Saturday.

At 11:45pm, a policeman starts removing the rope and 10 minutes later, night finally drops its curtain all over the station as the Thar Express leaves Karachi on its 495th journey. It will stop at the Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas stations to pick up passengers. Thereafter, it will reach the Zero Point station, which was built in 2006, right on the international border and just nearly eight kilometres from the desert town of Khokhrapar. Counting from Karachi, this will take less than eight hours. Immigration and customs checks will be performed here, before the train crosses the border and stops at the Munabao station. The same train will bring passengers from the Indian side to Zero Point and then reach Karachi via the same route late Saturday night.

I travel to Hyderabad to meet FIA deputy director Qamar Raza Jiskani, whose staff goes to the Zero Point station every week for immigration purposes. He says that during the past decade, 233,876 passengers have departed from Pakistan on this train, while 210,812 have arrived. The difference of around 23,000 people who left Pakistan during the past 10 years but did not return from India gives the lie to the view that Indians slip into Pakistan. The year 2014 saw the highest number of people going to India and coming to Pakistan, 38,741 and 33,678 respectively. The lowest figures were seen in 2011, with 15,011 departing passengers and 14,185 arrivals.

The Thar Express is the cheapest mode of cross-border transport being used by people in Sindh in Pakistan, and in Rajasthan and Gujarat in India. Before this train service was put in place, people in the south of the country would go all the way to Lahore to cross over, a daylong train journey, to board the Samjhauta Express that connects Lahore and Amritsar.

This train service is a success story of the peace process between Pakistan and India. Its operation was halted only once in 10 years (from Aug 19, 2006 till Feb 17, 2007), not because of strained relations between the two countries but due to heavy rains that damaged the tracks on the Indian side.

Security remains the primary focus of the authorities, though this concern causes hardship not just to passengers but also to the officials who visit the Zero Point station for their duties. The area is under strict watch of the Rangers and no civilian, not even a passenger from nearby Khokhrapar, is allowed to visit the station or board the train. The people of Khokhrapar, or Tharparkar district, have to go all the way to Mirpurkhas to take the train. Only a handful of railway porters are allowed to come to the station every week.

I travelled to Zero Point by road a week before the inauguration of the rail link 10 years ago. There was no road from Jalu Jo Chaunro to Khokhrapar and the only mode of transport that could be used to cross the desert was 4x4 vehicles or trucks, locally known as kekra. Now that Khokhrapar has been connected with the rest of the province, Zero Point is still inaccessible as the security establishment does not allow the extension of the road as far as the border.

Back in 2006, the station building was an under-construction open structure; nothing seems to have changed in the past 10 years. There are no scanners and the entire baggage of each passenger is manually searched by the customs and Anti-Narcotics Force authorities. Mobile phones and landlines don’t work at Zero Point due to security reasons and the convenience of passengers seems to be the last priority.

“This is the only place in the country where immigration control is being carried out manually because there are no signal towers to connect our terminals with the online integrated border management system,” Jiskani tells me. “The Khokhrapar station is the best place for passengers as well as for staff as they can reach there by road easily.”

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2016