Washed away: Three girls fall prey to mighty Indus

The group of young girls were doing laundry on the bank of River Indus.

PATTAN:

Local authorities have failed to recover the bodies of three young girls who are feared dead after being swept away by River Indus on Saturday afternoon.

The police quoted eyewitnesses as saying that a group of young girls – including two sisters – of a local Kohistani tribe were doing laundry on the bank of River Indus when one of them namely Nazia Bibi 15, slipped into the river. Her elder sister Tota Bibi, 18, and a cousin Zainab jumped after her in a bid to rescue her but all three of them disappeared in the water within seconds.

The friends of the three victims informed their parents of the incident who rushed there along with locals to search for the girls but failed as the flow of water was on extraordinary surge owing to the melting of snow in the upstream hilly areas over the last few days.

“There is hardly any chance of their survival. The river might have washed them way hundreds of miles downstream,” Station House Officer Pattan Police Station, Hakim Khan said, while talking to The Express Tribune on Sunday.

Khan denied that the girls might have fallen prey to a family feud, adding that although a culture of years-old enmity was deeply embedded in the Kohistani tribal society, the tribesman do not harm the women of their opponents.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 6^th, 2011.