Nawabshah tragedy: Police reprimanded for not submitting investigation report

Dumper's driver, Zahid Khan, cleaner Abdul Qayum, owner Afzal Khan were nominated in FIR but they are still at large.

HYDERABAD:

As the bereaved families of 22 schoolchildren, who were killed in a road accident in Nawabshah last month, observed chehlum of their deceased children on Friday, the court reprimanded the police for failing to submit an investigation report.

"Many innocent children lost their lives due to the negligence of those responsible. Why have the accused not been arrested so far?" the district and sessions judge Mushtaq Ahmed Kalwar asked DSP Muhammad Raheem Gopang at the hearing. The accident, which occurred on January 15 on a link road between Nawabshah and Qazi Ahmed, claimed the lives of 24 persons, including a teacher and a van driver. The van was hit head-on by a dumper carrying grit for a housing scheme on the outskirts of Nawabshah.

The schoolchildren belonged to Daulatpur and were enrolled in the Bright Future Public High School. The dumper's driver, Zahid Khan, cleaner Abdul Qayum and owner Afzal Khan were nominated in an FIR but they are still at large.

The judge told off the police official for his failure to appear before the court at an earlier hearing of the case on February 19. The investigation officer maintained that the report was not submitted due to a delay in the medical reports from the hospitals. DSP Gopang said that the police are also trying to arrest the suspects who have escaped to the tribal areas in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The judge, however, ordered the official to submit the report without further delay.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2014.