Islamabad's G-10 Sunday Bazaar Demolished Overnight as Traders Lose Everything

Around 1,000 stalls, kiosks and carts were flattened in the dark. Between 2am and 3am on Thursday, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) demolished Islamabad's G-10 Sunday Bazaar, wiping out goods worth millions of rupees and leaving stallholders to return in the morning to rubble where their livelihoods had stood.

The traders say they were given no chance to save anything. Many describe the stock destroyed in the operation as their lifetime savings — goods bought on credit and built up over years — now gone without warning and without a chance to collect their belongings.

A market that was meant to reopen

The demolition came as a shock because the market had only been shut temporarily two weeks earlier, over security concerns. Traders say they were assured at the time that the closure was short-term and that the bazaar would reopen. Instead, they woke to news that it had been razed overnight.

That gap between the assurance and the demolition is now the heart of the traders' anger. A temporary security closure is one thing; losing an entire market in the middle of the night, with no notice to remove stock, is another. For the stallholders, the question is not only why the market was demolished, but why they were told it would return.

What the Sunday Bazaar meant

Sunday bazaars are a fixture of life in Islamabad, drawing crowds looking for affordable clothes, household goods, food and second-hand bargains. For many of the G-10 traders, the weekly market was their only income — a stall passed down or built up slowly, serving customers who could not afford regular shops.

The scale of the loss is what makes this more than a local planning dispute. Around 1,000 stalls is not a handful of unauthorised kiosks; it is a small economy in itself, supporting the traders and their families, as well as the suppliers and transport workers who served them.

What happens next

The CDA has not, in the reports so far, set out what it plans for the site or what compensation, if any, the affected traders will receive. That silence leaves the stallholders in limbo: no market, no stock, and no clear path to rebuilding their businesses.

The episode also raises a wider question about how the capital treats its informal markets. Islamabad's Sunday bazaars serve thousands of shoppers every week, yet they exist at the discretion of the authorities, with little of the protection that formal businesses enjoy. When a market can be shut for security one week and demolished the next, the traders who depend on it have no security of their own.

For now, the G-10 traders are counting their losses. What they want is simple: an explanation, a chance to recover what can be recovered, and a clear answer about whether their market — and their livelihoods — will ever come back.

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