ISLAMABAD: It was painful for a 74-year-old man to bury his son who died after falling into a ditch at an under-construction metro bus station in the capital in 2014. However, it is more painful for him as he could not get justice even after three years due to legal complications.

Ironically, the original inquiry report which may link higher officials of the metro bus project with the incident went missing from the record of the Islamabad administration.

Gulfam Khan has been running from pillar to post to get justice after his 40-year-old son Moazzam Ali Khan died on June 29, 2014.

Gulfam Khan’s son died after falling into a ditch in an under-construction metro bus station

Mr Khan filed a lawsuit for the recovery of compensation with the civil judge of Islamabad soon after the death of his son.

The civil judge dismissed the suit for non-prosecution as Mr Khan went to the UK for a couple of months and his lawyer could not attend the court proceedings. When he came back, he learnt that the lawsuit had been dismissed.

The clerk of the lawyer filed an application for the restoration of the suit without obtaining the signatures of the plaintiff.

After keeping the matter pending for over a year, Civil Judge Ihtisham Alam Khan last month dismissed the application saying the clerk was not competent to file such an application.

Another lawyer then advised Mr Khan to file an appeal with the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for the restoration of the case. The lawyer asked him to arrange the original inquiry report to submit along with the petition to the IHC.

After the death of Moazzam, assistant commissioner Kamran Cheema conducted an inquiry and declared that the death was caused due to the negligence of the metro bus contractor.

The inquiry officer recorded the statements of Mr Khan, the director of the metro bus project, the duty officer of the Kohsar police station and the official of the traffic police.

Sub-inspector of the traffic police, Allah Ditta, in his statement said, “there was no protection wall, barrier, marking fence or a warning light around the ditch…(and) the accident happened due to the absence of the required safety and protective measures.”

The inquiry report stated that “during the cross-examination the contractor failed to prove that there were protective measures at the site before the accident.” The inquiry concluded that the absence of proper safety measures had caused the death of the man.

However, when Mr Khan approached the office of the chief commissioner – the custodian of the record – he was informed that the original file had gone missing.

The inquiry officer held the contractor, Limark-Reliable, responsible for the negligence.

However, a senior officer of the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) told Dawn that Limark was a subsidiary of construction tycoon ZKB as its director Ahmed Khan was the son of ZKB’s owner.

According to him, after the death of Mozzam, the then RDA director general asked the contractor to settle the matter on his own with the family.

This was the reason the RDA did not even register the death whereas under the rules even minor injuries at project sites are mentioned in the record, he added.

RDA deputy director Athar Bokhari, who was overseeing the metro bus project, told Dawn that the incident had been reported to Mr Saeed.

Senior advocate Niazullah Khan Niazi said in addition to the contractor, the RDA director general and deputy director ZKB and Hanif Abbasi, who was the chairman of the metro bus project, may be implicated in the case as it was their collective responsibility to ensure safety measures at the construction site.

He, however, said since the original record had gone missing, in case the IHC restores the lawsuit it would be difficult for the plaintiff to establish the negligence of the contractor, RDA and others on the basis of photocopies of the inquiry report.

When contacted, Ali Mohammad Malik, the reader of the assistant commissioner, said he kept the record with him till his transfer to another section in April 2015.

“I don’t know what happened to the original inquiry report after my transfer,” he added.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2017