Gujrat van fire: LHC asked to order judicial inquiry

LAHORE: A petition has been filed at the Lahore High Court seeking a judicial inquiry into a school van fire in which 17 people, most of them children, perished in Gujrat last Saturday. Media reports of the disaster stated that the fire appeared to have been caused by an engine spark combined with a fuel leak. The petitioner, Advocate Shahid Ikram Siddiqui, submitted that a judicial inquiry should look at what caused the fire and to assign blame in case it was a result of negligence. He said that dozens of people had died in CNG cylinder explosions and fires on public transport vehicles last year, but the government had done nothing to improve regulation. He said that the explosions were a result of defective cylinders and amateur alterations in the vehicles’ mechanical systems. He said that government departments were not inspecting the quality of cylinders or vehicles.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2013.