Highway accident: Police start manhunt for drivers, owners of vehicles

A team has been called in from Islamabad to collect DNA samples for identification process

KARACHI:

Authorities are still trying to trace and arrest those responsible for the deadly accident at the Kathore Link Road on Saturday. Police have, however, registered a case against the drivers and owners of the passenger coach and the oil tanker involved in the accident.

At least 62 people, including women and children, were burned alive on the Shikarpur-bound Geo al-Shoaib Coach that had started its journey from Karachi. The overcrowded bus caught fire following a collision with the tanker on Kathore Link Road at around midnight on Saturday night.

An FIR, No 4/15, under Sections 319, 320, 322, 279 and 337-G/34 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), was registered at the Memon Goth police station on behalf of sub-inspector Azizullah Chandio. The police have included sections dealing with killings by mistake, injuries, over-speeding and negligence in the FIR.

"It was not an oil tanker, but an empty tanker bearing registration plates of Lasbella, Balochistan. We are trying to trace its owners and driver," District Malir SSP Rao Anwar told The Express Tribune. "It is clear that the bus driver remained safe in the accident and managed to escape. We have traced his identity and are trying to arrest him and the owner too." SSP Anwar said that the police had named the bus driver in the FIR for over-speeding and have also implicated the owner as the latter had installed extra seats, which had blocked the emergency exit. Police have conducted raids in different parts of the city to arrest the owners and the drivers, but so far none of the suspects have been arrested.

DNA samples

Doctors at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre have collected 24 more samples from relatives of the victims. On Sunday, the doctors had collected as many samples from relatives too. "So far, we have collected 48 DNA samples from the victims' relatives, which will be sent for testing," JPMC's joint executive director Dr Seemin Jamali told The Express Tribune. "The samples have been handed over to the police who will send them to a laboratory."

DNA test procedure

At least 17 unidentifiable bodies of victims of the Baldia Town factory fire, awaiting DNA tests, were buried at the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) graveyard. "The legal protocol was not followed in the case of the Baldia factory fire victims and several bodies were handed over to the wrong families," said an official privy to the matter. "If the legal process will not be followed this time, it is feared that there will be same confusion again."

Police officials have written a letter to the National Forensic Science Agency of the National Police Bureau in Islamabad, asking the agency to send a team to collect the samples. "We do not want to repeat what happened with the DNA tests in the Baldia Town factory fire," Investigations SP Malik Altaf told The Express Tribune. "A team from Islamabad will be here within a couple of days to collect the samples in a proper manner. The DNA tests will take at least two weeks."

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2015.