Home-made alcohol took six more lives in Karachi on Thursday, raising the death toll from methanol-tainted liquor consumption since Tuesday to 29.
Since Tuesday evening, a total of 45 victims of the home-made toxic liquor have been brought to Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. Around 16 of them are still fighting for their lives, according to the in-charge of the JPMC emergency department, Dr Seemin Jamali.
As the fatalities soared, newly-appointed Excise and Taxation Minister Gayan Chand Asrani suspended two directors and four deputy-directors of his department, belonging to the Karachi and Hyderabad regions.
Asrani was given the charge after Mukesh Kumar Chawla was removed from the post after the provincial government deemed the minister ‘negligent’ for issuing licences to substandard wine shops in Hyderabad, where 20 people had died after consuming liquor over the past week.
At his first press conference after taking charge, Asrani also announced that licenses of all spirit-sellers in the provinces would be suspended until investigations were completed.
Karachi District East police chief DIG Munir Ahmed Shaikh, who was tasked by AIGP Ghulam Qadir Thebo to conduct a special inquiry on the sale of toxic liquor in the city, suspended the station house officers of five police stations including Landhi, Korangi, Zaman Town, Sharafi Goth and Shah Latif Town, as well as the station investigation officer of Korangi police station. The DSPs of Korangi and Landhi have also been suspended.
DIG Shaikh directed the relevant police stations to register FIRs of the victims under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code, so that the culprits would be tried for qatl-e-amd [intentional and deliberate murder].
Published in The Express Tribune, October 10th, 2014.
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