Faulty
streetlights also blamed for tragedy
Source: Dawn, the
internet edition … Mar 21, 2001 |
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KARACHI, March
20: People residing on the PECHS Block 2 street, where two
innocent children lost their lives due to police firing on a
car, on Monday, have urged the government to also take the
senior DMC-East officials to task for failure in replacing
faulty streetlights.
It was in the small hours of Monday that two minor children -
Auzan and Aliza - of Senior Civil and Assistant Sessions
Judge, Rashida Asad, died when bullets fired by the police on
the judge's official car, hit them after smashing the front
windscreen of the vehicle.
They were killed when the police resorted to indiscriminate
firing at the judge's car, in which two of the three bandits
made their successful escape attempt from the scene, by
holding the judge, her husband and the two children hostage at
gunpoint. The third bandit could not flee due to injury, and
was reportedly handed over by the husband to a police mobile,
while rushing to a hospital to seek medical help for their
children.
People residing in the neighbourhood said: "Had there
been sufficient streetlights, the policemen who claim that
they were unable to see the occupants of the ill-fated car,
would not have opened fire, since the vehicle's windscreen was
not tinted."
Only two streetlights had been operational on the quarter-mile
long street, but the DMC officials took no measures to replace
the faulty ones which had been lying out of order for the past
one year, residents of the locality complained. They deplored
the fact that their repeated requests to the DMC senior-most
officials and the concerned officials of the electrical and
mechanical department, had gone unheeded.
They demanded of the Ferozabad SDM, assigned the task of
launching an inquiry into the tragic incident, to also hold
the concerned DMC officials as co-accused in the incident,
since the street where the tragic incident took place often
remained plunged in darkness.
In support of their contention, the neighbours said, "If
the streetlights had been working properly, the policemen
wouldn't have dared to make the excuse that they could not see
the judge, her husband and the ill-fated children being held
hostage in the car by the bandits."
To set the record straight, some residents of the locality
said, "Although the side and rear windows of the car were
tinted, the front windshield was not, and its was from there
that the bullets were fired by the policemen which took the
lives of the innocent children." |
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