President takes notice of stowaway case

Zardari directs CAA, ASF and police to inspect the crime scene.

LAHORE: President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday took notice of the stowaway case in Lahore and directed the Civil Aviation Authority, Airport Security Force and police to inspect the crime scene.

Police have also sent a letter to airport authorities, requesting them to cooperate in the case, who they claim are not cooperating in the investigations.

Updated from print version (below)

Fatal fall: Man buried without identification

The man who supposedly fell of an airplane was buried on Sunday without being identified.

Doctors confirmed to the police investigators that most of his bones were broken as a result of a fall. The autopsy report will however be prepared in three days.

While talking to The Express Tribune, SP Cantonment (investigation) Amin Bukhari said that doctors doing the bodies postmortem have verbally conveyed to the police that the man had died as a result of falling from a height.

Bukhari said that he has asked the Civil Aviation Authority to provide CCTV footage of the Dubai bound plane – from which the man apparently fell.

In an attempt to save themselves, airport authorities however are maintaining that the man was murdered as serious questions regarding security will arise if his death was indeed a result of a fall from the airplane.

Lahore Capital City Police Officer Aslam Tareen said that the most important aspect of the case was to identify the man. He said it was premature to say what caused the man’s death.

He added that if the dead person was an employee at the airport, the course of investigation would be different.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2011.