Even if DNA testing is conducted, the database in Karachi is so small that it is very unlikely that the sample can be matched to a particular person.
KARACHI: A medical team, under the supervision of a District Malir judicial magistrate, collected on Tuesday deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) samples on Tuesday from the bodies of 10 suspected assailants who had allegedly stormed the Karachi airport in June, 2014.
Around 25 people, including the Airport Security Force, Rangers and police personnel, were killed in the battle with the militants that involved suicide attacks and a severe gunfight.
Three people have been facing a trial under the Anti-Terrorism Act for allegedly providing logistical support, funds and weapons to the attackers.
The samples collected from the bodies of the assailants, buried in Edhi graveyard off the Super Highway, have been handed over to the police to take them to the forensic laboratory in Islamabad for the identification of the men, said senior police surgeon Dr Ijaz Ahmed Khokhar, who was part of the four-member medical team.
The team, headed by Jinnah Sindh Medical University forensics medicines department chairperson Professor Farhat Hussain Mirza, also included Dr Karar Ahmed Abbasi and Dr Summaya Syed, both of whom are medico-legal officers at the Civil Hospital, Karachi.
The process was conducted on court orders after police moved an application to exhume the bodies and to ascertain identities of the attackers, following the revelation that a suspected militant, Ishaq alias Bobby, who was arrested recently, that his brother-in-law, Majid, and his friend, Ehtisham were also among the dead attackers.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 23rd, 2016.
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