A Feature Article on Loss, Exploitation, and the Struggle for Recovery
By Sameed Gillani, Saqlain Ali, and Saqib Ahmed
The day of fire, 17 January 2026 was as clear in the memory of the owner of Amire Favours as it was yesterday. Where his mehndi decoration shop used to be, there was nothing, no merchandise, no shelves, no trace that a business had ever existed there at all. He reached for his phone. Someone had previously put a video of the fire on Instagram. It had thousands of views. In the background was his shop. That night, as fires tore through one of Karachi’s largest commercial markets, turning hundreds of establishments into ruins in a couple of hours, Pakistan’s internet replied with surprising speed, influencers retweeted, donation drives were declared, instagram got swamped with stories. For a minute it seemed as if the nation had closed its ranks around its merchants. Then the craze died, and the retailers were alone with charred storefronts, empty pockets, and a phone screen encouraging them to go viral.
Amire Favours’ owner is still waiting months later. “We don’t even have money to eat or to pay rent,” he continues. There’s no drama in his voice, only tiredness. He’s not looking for sympathy. He’s looking for clients. The Dee-Baj Factory Outlet selling blankets and bed linen had a similar story. Our shops were destroyed to the ground. “We had to start from scratch,” explains its owner. Toys Collection Pakistan lost over 45 lakh rupees in one night. Royal Infants, which supplied clothing for newborns and accessories for children up to four years old, saw its stores burn to the ground. Taj Floor Mats, a business the owner’s father began back in 1996, lost its entire retail customer base overnight. “There is zero sale online,” its owner adds. “I lost my retail customers. These are not numbers. These are families.
Most Gul Plaza traders didn’t actually have going online as part of the strategy before the fire. The business was good. They had customers. Syed Maaz, social media manager at The One More Crockery, which lost all five of its Gul Plaza outlets, thinks that out of hundreds of shops, only around 30 to 40 had any substantial internet presence before the tragedy. “After the fire, some 40 percent of affected traders attempted to go online,” said the proprietor of Toys Collection Pakistan. The term “attempted” is loaded here. Selling tableware online is not simple. Customers don’t want to buy online because they’re scared of breaking the products, Maaz explains. Now, his store averages one delivery a day, a figure he describes as good, but one that barely begins to address what was lost. For Taj Floor Mats, which has wholesale contacts that date back nearly three decades, an Instagram presence is not much of a substitute. For Amire Favours, who makes a living off personal referrals and event reservations, the internet offers even less. “We want our customers back,” says the owner. Our pages need to be promoted so we can reach a bigger audience. It is a basic request. And yet it remains largely unaddressed months later.
Influencers were among the first to respond to the fire, and some came with legitimate intent. Content creator Wadiya Gillani, with 213,000 followers, offered her services completely free of cost and endorsed only those businesses she could personally vouch for establishments she worked with before the fire or ones advised through reputable sources. “If I endorsed a business that was exploiting a tragedy it is very important that I take accountability for it,” she argues. “She’s done it before, when she promoted a fraudulent scheme without knowing it. She took the post down right away, issued a public apology, and warned her followers. Daniya Gillani, who has 21,200 followers, was just as cautious. “I try to look at their page history, consistency in their content and if there was any presence before the incident,” she explains. Both promotions were choices. They were choices made voluntarily for the sake of being helpful, not because of opportunities for content.
But not all creators used the same discipline, and not all businesses that came knocking were what they said they were. Ayesha Khawar, a creative with 12,800 followers, freely acknowledges that in the heat of the moment, she largely relied on what businesses put forward on their own accounts. “In retrospect, I should have done more due diligence,” she says. Musfira Guliyana says the same thing: “I relied on the information given to me and know I could have double checked things further.” Areeja Haider says she did a basic check through a brand’s page and story highlights, but cross-checking with news reports or official sources would have been a more responsible thing to do. They all point to the same cause behind their decisions: the urgency of a crisis. “When something serious happens there is a natural urge to help quickly,” Khawar explains. “But that urgency can sometimes mean you don’t check everything as thoroughly as you normally would.” That gap between urgency and verification is precisely where exploitation slipped in.
An exhibition was organized in Moin Khan Academy to help the displaced traders of Gul Plaza. Only 15 of the affected shops received legitimate stalls at the event out of 1,200. However, with them, unknown faces quietly established their own stalls with the name of Gul Plaza and stole the money and goodwill that the wishes of the real victims. Maaz was there to witness it. “There were a lot of unverified people who planted their stalls in the name of Gul Plaza,” he claims. It was not a one off. Multiple merchants verified that unverified businesses had been leveraging the name of the Gul Plaza on social media to generate traffic and sales before and after that event as well. “The name of Gul Plaza was used by many people to increase their own sales,” says the proprietor of Toys Collection Pakistan. “It was really easy for someone to falsely claim they were affected because the topic was trending,” explains Royal Infants owner, putting the mechanics of it plainly. When a buyer donates to or buys from a fake account, believing they are aiding a fire victim, the real victims get nothing, and they lose a transaction to someone who was never burned.
Perhaps the most quietly devastating fact to emerge from the shopkeepers’ tales is not about bogus storefronts or viral trends. It’s about the influencers who accepted gifts and gave nothing back. “Some influencers took gifts from us but not a single mention in return,” says the proprietor of Dee-Baj Factory Outlet. Amire Favours owner says no influencer assisted him at all, despite early efforts by the traders’ group to coordinate advertising. The owner of Taj Floor Mats is equally blunt: “Nobody promoted my business.” Meanwhile, several vloggers were discreetly cultivating their own audiences off the tragedy itself. “Many vloggers were getting content benefits by showcasing the incident,” claims proprietor of Toys Collection Pakistan. The fire was glad. The victims provided the backdrop. Royal Infants was one of the few ones to see tangible gains from influencer backing, with its Instagram reach jumping to over five million views, although even its owner points to the inconsistency. Many offered help but failed to deliver.
These shopkeepers are not begging for charity. They want customers, visibility, and honesty. “My suggestion is that customers start ordering online,” says Maaz, “but please check the credibility of the shop before ordering.” “And you must visit the Gul Tijara market, many of the shops from Gul Plaza have shifted there.” Dee-Baj’s owner makes a more serious request – that all shops in Pakistan should have fire extinguishers and proper gas safety equipment installed, a practical demand pointing towards a future when such destruction might be prevented. As for the influencers who pushed businesses they could not completely vet, majority say they are ready to give clarifications. “Transparency is not up for negotiation,” Khawar says. “I’d rather be upfront about it than ignore it,” Daniya Gillani says clearly.
That is the appropriate instinct. But to the proprietor of Amire Favours, sitting with a phone he cannot afford to top up, waiting for a notice of a customer that does not arrive, good intentions feel very far away. In that period, he claims, “nobody helped us”. No one is helping us right now.
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