Stowaway case: Body identified as 9th grade student

Boy identified as Qasim Siddique, ran away from home two days before the incident.

LAHORE: Police on Tuesday identified the body of the Lahore stowaway, who had fallen off a Dubai bound plane, as Qasim Siddique, a ninth grade student.

Express 24/7 correspondent Shiraz Hasnat reported that the body had been identified by the parents, who had been traced through a receipt found in Qasim’s pocket.

Qasim, who had disappeared two days before the incident, had run away with his friend Amir, whose whereabouts are still unknown. Qasim's parents had lodged a complaint with the police when he had gone missing.

The body had been found on January 15, when residents of Street 5 in Al Faisal Colony reported hearing a loud bang between 9:10 and 9:15 pm at one of the houses on the street. A flight headed for Dubai had recently taken off from Allama Iqbal International Airport, which is located close to the colony.

The pilot of an Airblue flight had contacted the control room immediately after take-off and reported a malfunction while closing a plane’s wheels, air traffic control sources said, informing the controllers a few minutes later that the problem had been rectified.

The air traffic controllers said that the time of the flight’s take off coincided with that of the man’s fall, saying it was likely that the stowaway was hiding in the plane’s wheels which might have caused the wheel’s malfunction.

The body had earlier been buried without identification. Doctors had confirmed to the police investigators that most of the bones were broken as a result of a fall.