Seeking justice

The restaurant hums with people day in and day out while the case still lingers on

“Is that it?” asked my friend Sibte, with a surprised look on his face. “Yes, that’s how our system works,” I replied nonchalantly.

We were discussing a story that had made the headlines in newspapers; the case which had sparked a heated debate over the check and balance system employed to monitor Karachi’s restaurants that have sprung up out of nowhere. Yes, it was the famous Kanza Ahmad case — a young girl who expired after consuming a toxic burger from Dilpasand, a fast food joint, more than a month ago.

What was ironic for Sibte was the fact that after the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR) report surfaced, stating loud and clear that the burger was “not fit for human consumption”, the police was highly reluctant to seal shut the restaurant. When the findings of the report were published in The Express Tribune, the health department, out of embarrassment, took action and shut down the restaurant, claiming that it doesn’t have the power to seal it. Meanwhile, the police refrained from taking any action against the owners of the eatery. The police claimed that the PCSIR report was insufficient to make a case for arresting the owners or sealing the restaurant. Maybe the police wanted the chemicals in the burger to themselves record the statement.

Two days later, the owners of the fast food joint obtained a stay order from the Sindh High Court against the shutdown and filed a case of defamation against a private TV channel and the health department for harassing them and damaging the restaurant’s name. The restaurant is now humming with people day in and day out.

Amid all this, morning shows have now decided to make hay while the sun shines. One male host of a morning show, whose shows are sponsored by Dilpasand, invited the father of the ill-fated girl and tried his best to somehow refute the findings of the PCSIR report and raised as many questions as he could on its credibility. Another morning show host on a competing channel took it up a notch and went to the deceased girl’s home and did a show from there. Now with two months having passed, with so much coverage in print and electronic media, the case still lingers on. Like any other untoward incident, which occurs, gets coverage, goes into court and then glides into obscurity; this case is also all set to fade away in a similar manner.

Kanza is dead. She is not going to come back. But her father still has high hopes of clinching justice, like any other father who wants to get justice for his daughter.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th, 2015.