Gas explosion: Peshawar commissioner still in critical condition

Official shifted to private hospital, injured woman still at PIMS.

ISLAMABAD: Peshawar Commissioner Sahibzada Muhammad Anis remained in critical condition on Sunday, with doctors saying his health had “worsened” overnight.

The commissioner was seriously injured in an explosion caused by a “gas leak” at a basement studio apartment at the Park Towers in Islamabad’s Sector F-10 on Saturday evening. A woman, identified as Asghar-un-Nisa, was also in the apartment at the time of the explosion and was hurt in the incident.



Doctors at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) who initially treated Anis at the hospital’s burns centre said Anis had received 95-100 per cent burns.

The chances of survival for a person with third-degree burns are very low, doctors said. “But instances of burn victims miraculously recovering have been reported worldwide. In most of those reported cases, however, the recovery is a long and difficult process.”

On Sunday afternoon, the commissioner’s family moved him from Pims to a private hospital near Golra Mor.

Doctors at the private hospital confirmed that Anis, a BS-20 officer, was being treated in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit but did not give a decisive statement on his current medical condition.

Pims doctors had earlier told the media that Anis’s condition had worsened, without giving details of his injuries.

The woman, who had received 45 per cent burns in the incident, is in critical condition as well and is being kept at the Pims Burns Centre.

The circumstances of the explosion remained a mystery, 24 hours after the incident.



The police claimed the explosion was due to a gas leak in the apartment. A senior police official, who requested anonymity, said the Bomb Disposal Squad has also indicated in its report that the explosion was caused by a gas leak.

Assassination attempt rumours

One of Anis’ most notable recent actions as commissioner was overturning Dr Shakil Afridi’s 33-year-jail sentence. Afridi is incarcerated for allegedly helping the United States track down Osama Bin Laden.

Afridi was sentenced last May over charges of colluding with banned militant outfit Lashkar-i-Islam by Khyber Agency’s assistant political agent. Anis had ruled on August 29 that the judge who sentenced Afridi had exceeded his authority and ordered a new trial.

However, the Islamabad police dismissed rumours that the commissioner might have been at the centre of an assassination attempt made to look like an accident. The police also denied having found any trace of explosives.

“We are still examining the site to determine the exact point of the gas leak, but there is no visible indication explosives having been used,” the official said. “Whenever explosives are used, you see some kind of an impact on the walls or the floor in the form of a blast crater.”

The walls of Apartment 17, where the explosion occurred, did not collapse. The front door was ripped away and there were signs of damage inside the apartment, with shattered window glass and a ripped mattress, but the bed frame and a TV appeared unmoved by the explosion’s impact.

Security guards and residents said the explosion spread outward and caused damage to nearby apartments with broken windows and doors. They said thick smoke had covered the hallway in front of the apartment after the explosion.

The police claimed the woman burned with the commissioner was a relative but the family could not be reached to confirm this.

According to the police, the apartment belonged to a friend of the commissioner.

Sources said the commissioner was staying at Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa House in the capital along with his family and was in town to see-off his daughter, who left for the UK on October 25.

Earlier reports inaccurately stated that it was the commissioner’s son flying to the UK.

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