Interview With Karachi Cop and Author: Omar Shahid Hamid
In a city that has long balanced on the edge of chaos and resilience, Omar Shahid Hamid stands as both officer and observer. A Karachi cop who has captured the imagination of so many through his richly detailed novels rooted in the city’s political underbelly, starting from The Prisoner back in 2013. With over 20 years of experience in law enforcement, counterterrorism, and intelligence, Hamid bridges two worlds—one of duty, and another of storytelling that mirrors the pulse of Karachi itself.
Hamid’s decision to join the police force was born from tragedy—the violent death of his father. The experience of facing a murder investigation at close range forced him to confront the deeper question that would define his career: “What is wrong with the system?” That search for justice became his purpose. It shaped his path into law enforcement and later into literature, where he found another way to examine the same questions.
Writing entered his life unexpectedly. He had never imagined himself an author, but during a difficult period in his police career, he began to write as a release. What began as a personal outlet soon grew into something larger. His stories, drawn from real cases and encounters, carried a truth that was difficult to believe yet impossible to ignore.
While on study leave in London, Hamid began transforming these experiences into fiction. He noticed that much of what had been written about the police and the state came across as stilted and distant. Determined to capture the nuances of those interactions, he used Karachi’s streets, its officers, and its citizens as source material. From that blend of experience and reflection emerged his debut novel, The Prisoner. The book was steeped in the city’s tensions and moral ambiguities, blending realism with narrative grit.
The person who most shaped that world was Chaudhry Aslam, a renowned Karachi police officer and Hamid’s longtime colleague. The principal character in The Prisoner was inspired by Aslam’s professional courage and complex personality. When Aslam was killed on the very day Hamid was heading to a book event, the loss was both personal and symbolic—a moment when art and life seemed to collide. Hamid later said the novel helped preserve Aslam’s memory for future generations, though processing that grief far from home, in a London winter, was deeply isolating.
The success of The Prisoner and the books that followed brought Hamid closer to an unexpected audience—young readers who saw their own city reflected in his pages. Many told him they felt his stories articulated what they had lived but never seen expressed. He noted how Karachi, despite its decades of turmoil, lacked the kind of cultural storytelling—films, literature, documentaries—that other nations have used to reckon with their histories. His novels, in that sense, became a kind of urban record.
After his first three Karachi-centric books, Hamid began to explore new ground. He turned to another corner of Pakistan’s complex reality—match-fixing in cricket. For him, it was another story of silence and consequence, one of those “real-life gems” that reveal who we are beneath the surface.
Hamid describes himself first as a police officer—the job that pays the bills—but writing, he says, is what keeps him balanced. His years on the force have honed a photographic memory for details, scenes, and emotions that later find their way into his fiction.
Empathy, he believes, lies at the heart of both professions. “If you don’t have empathy,” he says, “you should probably not be doing this job.” Yet he acknowledges how constant exposure to suffering can desensitize even the most committed officers, and how that loss of feeling can widen the divide between police and public.
Hamid believes that the greatest challenge in policing is managing the criminal justice system itself. He says that people must see society as fair—where wrongdoing is punished and right action rewarded—for good governance and citizenship to take root.
Through both his writing and his work, Omar Shahid Hamid continues to search for fairness in systems, empathy in service, and humanity in a city still learning to tell its own story.
This feature has been produced in collaboration with JS Bank.
Have you ever witnessed or experienced moments that shaped your view of crime and policing in Karachi? Let us know in the comments!
This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools.
