Fighting over the dead

Welfare organisations fight with each other to claim as many bodies as possible.

KARACHI: There was complete mismanagement and chaos at the Aga Khan hospital on Friday where body parts of plane crash victims were rushed initially.

Scuffles broke out between hospital security guards and workers of various ambulance services when there was disagreement over which organisation would shift the bodies to the morgue once the doctors had stitched them together and completed the post-mortem.

There was a battle for space outside the emergency section. Drivers from Chippa, Edhi and the Khidmat-e-Khalq Foundation (KKF) workers parked their ambulances right in front of the gate, and each social worker armed with a stretcher pushed and shoved ‘rivals’ from other welfare service.

Victim Noor Mohammad Khan’s brothers had just arrived at the hospital in the hope of finding a piece of his body when the pandemonium began. “Can you please tell me how can I claim the body of my brother,” Adam Khan, one of the three teary-eyed brothers, was helplessly asking everyone around.

However, he was in for more shock when AKU guards led by Colonel (retired) Saleem used brute force to control the situation and kicked everyone, including ambulance workers and relatives of plane crash victims coming in their path.

Adam fell face down. Middle-aged scouts Muhammad Tahir Sheikh and Muhammad Sami, who were one of the first people to reach the crash site near Gulistan-e-Jauhar and helped the ambulance service workers, too were injured.

Sixteen bodies were brought to the hospital. Chippa workers claimed that they brought 12 of them, while Edhi workers said nine of the victims came in their ambulances. “We did most of the work at the crash site. We were the first ones there so why should we allow other workers to take away the bodies away in their ambulances,” argued one Chippa worker.

Initially, when doctors brought a body outside the emergency gate, the rival social workers pulled the victim’s pieces each to their side amid taunts to each other — much to the horror of the victim’s relatives standing outside. Chippa workers screamed, “Just because your people are in power doesn’t mean you can bully us” to the KKF workers, while the KKF workers shouted at Edhi workers for “being supporters of Aga Khanis”.

A 60-year-old man whose brother-in-law died in the tragedy was touching the window of the Edhi ambulance where that body finally found space. “I don’t even have the energy to protest,” he said. However, other relatives didn’t react as calmly and many were left no choice but scream “Is this what you call social work?”

The situation only came under control when police led by SSP East Niaz Khosa entered the premises and calmed the nerves. “It’s a tragedy that at a time when the families of victims are suffering, the ambulance service workers are fighting with each other over bodies only because they want to show to the media that they did the most work,” he said.

Khosa made peace among the parties involved only after it was decided that half of the bodies would be shifted in Chippa and the other eight in Edhi ambulances.

An AKU spokesperson said the hospital management had learnt lessons from the episode and would make amends. When asked why wasn’t a special counter set up for the victims of the families, many of who were sitting on the grass outside and didn’t have a clue which official to speak with in order to claim the body, spokesman Rasool Sarang said the issue was being looked into.

Bodies taken to Jinnah hospital

The morgue at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre smelled of burning flesh as 16 bodies, wrapped in sheets labelled with either Edhi or Chhipa, lay on the ground. Doctors were seen trying to identify the bodies with shoes, or remains of clothes.

Fatima Bhe, 56, was trying to convince the security guard to let her in. Her 37-year-old cousin, Tariq Mehmood, was in the plane that crashed early Friday. “I beg you to let me go in. Tariq’s brothers and children are in Narewal and can’t come here to identify his body,” she pleaded.

The relatives of Azam Nizamani, who hailed from Mirpur Mathelo, were also waiting anxiously but failed to identify the body. Nizamani’s uncle recalled that he was known as the “Edhi of Mathelo” because he was always socially active. The family has been shuffling between Aga Khan and Jinnah hospitals but have still not found the body.

Dr Hamid Ali told a group of journalists that they have received a total of 16 bodies and only four of them have been identified. The bodies of the pilot Captain Naeemul Haq, co-pilot Captain Noman Shamsi, Airport Security Force sub-inspector Zafar Iqbal and Sajid Rafiq were handed over to their heirs after post-mortem.

DNA samples of all bodies have been taken as well, Dr Ali added. SSP Investigations East Niaz Khosa said that the DNA samples will be sent to Islamabad and the results are expected within seven days. Until then, the bodies will be kept at the Edhi morgue in Sohrab Goth, he said.

Bodies of Muhammad Shahid, Engineer Altaf, Anthonio Sasso from Italy, Sadaqat Hussain and Saleemuddin, have been handed over to their heirs, he added.

“We need the families to cooperate and give us the towels or toothbrushes used by the victim so that we can identify them,” he requested. Khosa said that the families of the victims can visit him anytime at his office in Saudabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2010.