Speeding, overloading: Eight killed in AJK, Rawalpindi road accidents

Five members of family among victims; over dozen injured

RAWALPINDI/MUZAFFARABAD : At least eight people were killed and over a dozen injured in two separate road accidents on Motorway and Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, police and hospital sources told The Express Tribune.

A Karachi-bound passenger bus overturned on Motorway near Chakri Interchange at about 5:30 pm, resulting in the death of three passengers and injuries to 11 others.

The bus was going from Muzaffarabad to Karachi when one of its rear tyres inflated and it overturned due to speeding.

According to the public relations office of the Motorway police, the bus driver Asif escaped the scene after the accident. The accident occurred due to the negligence of the driver as he while overtaking another vehicle could not control the bus, the police said.

The deceased were identified as Sudheer Ahmed, 40, Makrani, 31, and Mir Muhammad Azad, 20, all residents of Muzaffarabad.

Among the 11 injured passengers, five sustained serious wounds. The bodies and the wounded were shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital in Chakwal and the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad. The bus (MDXA-795) also got badly damaged in the accident.

Meanwhile, at least five members of a family were killed and three others injured after a car fell into a ravine in the Chinari area of district Hattian Bala, some 55 kilometres away from Muzaffarabad.

According to the police, the ill-fated family was going from Chinari to Khilana village near the Line of Control in Chakothi sector in an overloaded car (AJK-6963). The car fell into the deep ravine, which resulted in the death of four women and a two-month-old boy, the police said, citing speeding and overloading as the cause of the accident.

Locals rushed to the spot and pulled the bodies and the injured from badly mangled car and shifted them to the District Headquarters Hospital in Hattian Bala for first aid and autopsy. Later, the three injured were shifted to the Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayid Al-Nahyan Hospital in Muzaffarabad for further treatment where doctors said that two of them were in critical condition.

The deceased were identified as Rehmat Jan, Sonia, Shabnam, Tehmina and Rafaqat and the injured as Raja Abrar, Khurram and Ghafoor.

According to data shared by the AJK Transport Authority with The Express Tribune, more than 200 people were killed in different road accidents across AJK from January to Sept 18.

An official of the AJK Transport Authority said on the condition of anonymity that motor vehicle examiners of the department were not performing their duty regularly.

“The AJK Transport Authority has no working culture and everyone working in the department is getting salary and other perks without doing any work,” the official claimed.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2016.