July 24, 2002	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 13,1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

RAWALPINDI, July 23: Four persons, including a woman and her child, sustained injuries and five vehicles were damaged after a drunken civil engineer of Army Welfare Housing Scheme (AWHS) lost control of his vehicle at Chandni Chowk on Monday evening, witnesses said.

The driver, identified in the FIR as Ashiq Mohammad Khan, riding in a double-cabin jeep, started hitting other vehicles from Chandni Chowk — a few yards from traffic police post — to the Commercial Market, where he was intercepted by some pedestrians. Besides damaging vehicles, he also hit and injured four people.

Rana Imtiaz Ahmed, one of the victims, lodged an FIR with the New Town police, saying he was standing on a footpath with his family members when he saw a double-cabin vehicle (CJ-8099) coming from Chandni Chowk. He said the driver appeared as if he had lost control over the steering.

“First he collided with a rickshaw and then he hit my new Suzuki car (RIY-5901), after which he also hit my wife and son,” Mr Ahmed said and added: “He hit my son twice and case injuries to him.”

A large number of the people, who had been watching the “hit and run” drama, grabbed the driver after he stopped the vehicle at the Commercial Market.

In the meantime, the patrolling police arrived at the scene and took the accused to New Town Police Station.

According to witnesses, the drunken driver was treated like a guest at the police station after they (police) discovered that he was an AWHS engineer.

“Is this justice? We had been kept out of the police station, while the accused was offered a chair by the station house officer,” one of the victims told Dawn.

When the New Town Police Station SHO, Ijaz Shah, was contacted, he said the accused had been taken to hospital after being arrested. An FIR has been registered against the accused, who is a resident of Dhoke Paracha, he said.