Hesco office ransacked, furniture torched over PMT blast, fire incident
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HYDERABAD: A 10-year-old victim of Thursday’s PMT blast and fire incident in Hyderabad succumbed to his burns on Saturday, taking the death toll of the Akbari Mosque tragedy to six.
The body of Arfeen, son of Mohammad Shakil Malik, was brought here from Karachi on Saturday and laid to rest in the Akbari graveyard. Some critically injured patients are still under treatment in the civil hospital and a private hospital in Karachi.
On Saturday, enraged people ransacked the Rizvi sub-division of Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) located on Autobahn Road. They took out furniture from the office and torched it on the road.
They also torched official record inside the office. Fire tenders were called by police to extinguish the fire.
Death toll rises to six as 10-year-old boy dies in Karachi
No FIR of the rioting was registered till late in the evening.
Angry residents of the locality blocked Autobahn Road in protest against many casualties in the tragedy. Police arrived and got the traffic movement restored.
Meanwhile, the A-Section police of Latifabad registered a case under Section 322 and 427 PPC on the complaint of ASI Hashim Ali Rajput, mentioning details of the blast and fire incident.
Qaumi Awami Tehreek leader Ayaz Latif Palijo on Saturday offered condolences to the heirs of the victims.
Speaking to them at their residence in Latifabad Unit-8, he demanded Rs10m compensation separately from the federal and Sindh governments for each of the deceased.
He told the victims’ families that PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Sindh governor and chief minister and federal ministers should have visited the site and the heirs the very next day. He said a murder case should be registered against Hesco officials.
He said similar incident took place in Islamabad Mohalla last month where seven children were injured and three of them later died. He said that Sindhi- and Urdu-speaking people were under “occupation of rulers”. They were paying taxes to government, he argued. He said these communities were being crushed under a conspiracy.
Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2021
