LAHORE: Officials said early on Thursday said that the body of a woman who fell into open an open sewerage line along with her minor daughter near Bhatti Chowk had been found.

Speaking to the media, Lahore Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Operations Faisal Kamran said that the body was found from the disposal station on Outfall Road.

Asked about the various reports about the water flow not being fast enough to carry away a person, he said, “You should also look at the time difference. When it happened, the water flow was fast; those are peak hours.”

He said that the water flow receded as the night progressed.

Asked whether the family would register a case, Kamran said, “Whatever the family says and whatever their opinion is, we will act according to that.”

Meanwhile, Lahore Operations SSP Mohammad Tauqir told Dawn that police had taken the woman’s husband into custody, adding that he was the one who had alleged that his wife had fallen into the sewerage line along with their minor daughter at around 7:30pm.

He said the police were questioning the husband. “It would be premature to say she was murdered or died in an accident,” he said.

According to the official, the husband was taken into custody on the statement of the woman’s father who alleged that the couple was not on good terms for the past few months.

The SSP said that the deceased woman’s father had expressed his doubts over the role of her husband, who had called Rescue 1122 and alerted it about his wife falling down the sewerage pipeline along with their minor daughter.

“We are investigating the case and will share more details once it is completed,” he said, adding that the minor girl was still missing.

Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz took notice of the incident and constituted a fact-finding committee to investigate the matter and submit a report within 24 hours.

It should also be mentioned that two officials of Tepa, a subsidiary of the Lahore Development Authority, were placed under suspension with immediate effect “on account of an incident [regarding] uncovered manholes”.

Earlier in the day, a Rescue 1122 spokesperson had said that teams were dispatched immediately after receiving a report of the incident and launched a vigorous search operation after receiving reports of the incident.

Last month, a seven-year-old boy in Punjab’s Bahawalpur district fell into an open manhole in Dhanote town near Lodhran city and died.

The same month, a three-year-old boy’s body was recovered from an open manhole in Karachi’s Gulshan-i-Iqbal area, more than 12 hours after the incident was first reported.

Additional input from Mansoor Malik