A turn for the worst: Eight killed in two road accidents

Dead include three transgender persons; another eight injured

MANSEHRA: At least eight passengers were killed and as many injured on Wednesday in two separate road accidents. Three transgender people were among the dead.

The Phulra police said some transgender people came to entertain villagers at a marriage ceremony in Kangar Doga Mahar village in Ogi tehsil on Tuesday night.

After the performance, they were on the way back to Taxila in a van. When the vehicle was near Tarhairi village, the driver lost control of the wheel and drove into a roadside gorge.



Two transgender people were killed on the spot, while at least a dozen injured were taken to Civil Hospital, Phulra and later shifted to King Abdullah Teaching Hospital, Mansehra. A four-hour delay in shifting the wounded resulted in the death of four of the 12 injured people, police and rescue workers said.

The deceased were identified as Rab Nawaz, Naseem Alam, Zafar Iqbal, Danish, Khursheed and Guddo, while the injured were identified as Billy, Adnan, Shabbir, Ali, Kashif, Shabbir, Zarqa, and Naeem.

Later, some members of the transgender community of Mansehra reached King Abdullah Teaching Hospital and they held a protest by placing the bodies in the middle of the medical facility.

They blocked the highway outside the hospital for over an hour and chanted slogans against the PTI-led Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government and the provincial health department.

Mansehra Shemale Association office bearers Mariya Khan and Nadra Khan flayed the PTI’s Sehat Ka Insaf initiative as there were no arrangements to shift the injured to Mansehra from Phulra. They claimed the King Abdullah Hospital staff demanded Rs5,000 to bathe each of the dead bodies, while the medical facility’s administration allegedly refused to shift the bodies to Taxila and Karachi. Two of the deceased were from the latter city.

Meanwhile, in the second road accident, two motorcyclists were killed when a speeding dumper truck hit their bike on GT road in the Sarae Saleh police jurisdiction. Officials said the riders were later identified as Tauseef Aziz and his younger brother Habib Aziz, both residents of Havelian, Abbottabad. The deceased were on their way home when a truck hit their motorcycle near Basti Sher Khan village, seven km from Haripur, killing the brothers on the spot.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2016.