Two found dead in five-star hotel

“Too early to tell cause of death as results of their lung, kidney, stomach and liver samples still pending,” Doctor

ISLAMABAD:

Two contract employees of Serena Hotel were found dead in one of its supply rooms on Monday, with the cause of death not ascertained till the time this report was filed.

Dr Tanveer Malik, a medico-legal officer at Polyclinic Hospital who conducted the postmortem, said the bodies of Raja Yasir, a 25-year-old resident of Kunjah (Gujrat), and Tariq Naqash, a 35-year-old native of Bagh (AJK), were brought to the hospital at 11:55 am.

“It is too early to tell the cause of death as the results of their lung, kidney, stomach and liver samples are still pending,” he said.

Serena Hotel Training and Development Corporate Director Azam Jamil said the hotel administration was not aware of the time at which the deceased went into the plant room to sleep, while pointing out that sleeping in such areas is against the hotel’s staff regulations.

Jamil said that duty managers were taking rounds of the hotel when they found the two men in the plant room. The management then called Rescue 1122, who shifted the two to Polyclinic, where they were pronounced dead.

Secretariat Police SHO Hakim Khan noted that “the scene had a strange, pungent smell which was difficult to recognise.”

Secretariat Police officials requesting anonymity said that the death appeared to be accidental, while police and hospital sources suspected that the pair died of chlorine poisoning as the popular swimming pool water sanitising chemical was stored in the same room. On the complaint of Yasir’s father Ashfaq Ahmed, the Secretariat police registered an FIR against the hotel’s security officer and two others.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2012.