Karachi police have expressed their displeasure over the attitude of Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA), saying the PFSA allegedly committed "breach of trust" by making its findings public about the food samples collected from the house of two minor brothers who had ostensibly died of ‘food poisoning’ last week, an official told Dawn.

The Karachi police official said they were writing a letter to PFSA that this was not an "advisable attitude" that instead of informing or handing over findings to the investigators of Karachi police, they allegedly informed the electronic media.

A section of electronic media on Friday reported that “no trace of poison was found in the food samples collected from the house of the two children who died of alleged food poisoning after eating out at a restaurant in Karachi last week.”

Quoting “sources in the Punjab Forensic Science Agency”, the media reports said that analysis of the food samples revealed “no trace of poison such as cyanide, insect killers or any other.”

One police investigator probing the death of the two minor brothers said that after media reports, they made telephone contact with the official concerned at the PFSA, but their call was not attended.

The official said that they were not in a position to make any comment about purported findings of the Punjab science lab as they have not officially received any report or confirmation so far.

Karachi police had sent at least 30 samples of eatables and other things collected from the house of the deceased brothers. These samples pertained to milk, water, vomiting and clothes of the children etc, which were sent to Lahore by air.

Besides these, four other samples related to the post-mortem examination of the minor brothers were sent through train to Lahore in order to protect the same so that the exact cause of death could be ascertained.

These samples were sent to Punjab as reportedly Sindh government’s laboratory concerned has become ‘non-functional’ lately.

The investigators said that they were still probing the cause of death and hoped that PFSA’s findings of post-mortem examination samples might help them to determine the cause of death.

The brothers, 18-month-old Ahmed and Muhammad and 5, had died from a suspected case of food poisoning on November 11, after dining out with their mother at a restaurant in Zamzama, Clifton.

After the tragic death of the minor brothers, Sindh Food Authority had sealed the restaurant as Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah took notice of the incident while Karachi police chief Dr Amir Ahmed Shaikh set up a probe body led by South SSP Pir Mohammed Shah.