MANSEHRA: Twenty-five persons were injured, some of them critically, when a Gilgit-bound passenger coach skidded off the Karakoram Highway and plunged into a gorge in Barseen area of Upper Kohistan on Sunday.

According to the police, the coach coming from Rawalpindi met the accident after the driver lost control over the steering while negotiating a sharp turn.

The police and Rescue 1122 personnel shifted the injured to the Civil Hospital Dasu. Five of the critically injured passengers were referred to Ayub Medical Complex Hospital in Abbottabad.

Separately, a man was killed over a land dispute in Laborkot area.

The slain, Mohammad Hafiz, was working on a disputed piece of land when his rival showed up there and fired at him, leaving him seriously injured. He was rushed to the King Abdullah Teaching Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead. The body was handed over to family after completion of medico-legal procedure in the hospital.

The Saddar police after lodging FIR started making raids to arrest the suspect.

COLLEGE HEAD TO MOVE COURT: The principal of the Pakistan Scouts Cadet College, Batrasi, has said he will move the Peshawar High Court over the threatening calls being made allegedly by the Pakistan Boys Scouts Association’s chief commissioner, asking him to step down from his post.

“The cadet college’s governing body chaired by the chief commissioner had extended my service for two years in November last year, but now the chief commissioner is forcing me to step down,” Brig retired Abdul Hafeez told reporters on Sunday.

He insisted that the chief commissioner had a personal vendetta against him after he had written a letter recently to the governing body, demanding that decisions approved in its meetings should not be countersigned by the chief commissioner being the body’s chairman as it created problems for the smooth functioning of the prestigious institution.

“The budget and promotions of the faculty approved by the governing body in Nov 2020 are yet to be approved, and when I highlighted this, the chief commissioner got enraged and asked me to step down voluntarily, or he will terminate me,” claimed Mr Hafeez.

“I will file a writ petition in the Abbottabad Circuit Bench of the PHC on Monday against the chief commissioner for hurling threats at me,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2021