KARACHI, Sept 13: A Sindh High Court inquiry tribunal investigating the April 9, 2008 violence came to know on Saturday that none of the public vehicles damaged or burnt that day was registered under any insurance scheme, a mandatory requirement for vehicles involved in commercial operations.

Headed by Justice Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui, the tribunal, which examined a total of 20 witnesses on its second open hearing, was told only by one of the owners of a vehicle, whose car was damaged by unknown protesters on April 9 while it was parked on Syedna Tahir Saifuddin Road near the City Courts, that the car was insured.

Some 17 owners or drivers of the vehicles, mainly belonging to the public transport business, however, failed to give any reason for such negligence. Answering the tribunal’s queries about insurance, most of them replied in the negative and light-heartedly, which suggested a low level of realisation of the seriousness of the issue among the transporters.

Even the owner of an inter-province bus stated that his vehicle, which operated between Karachi and Mansehra and was parked at Taj Complex when it was set on fire, was not registered under any insurance scheme.

“It’s really unfortunate,” Additional Advocate-General Sarwar Khan, appointed to assist the tribunal, told reporters outside the courtroom after the proceedings. “The transporters should be aware of their responsibility in this regard. This could have also reduced the intensity of their losses, but we have not witnessed such a trend in both individuals’ and transporters’ case.”

Earlier, the court examined two medico-legal officers posted at the Abbasi Shaheeed and Civil hospitals on April 9, 2008. Dr Iftikhar Memon and Dr Samia came into contact with the victims of the incident and recalled the event while they treated the injured or received the dead to conduct autopsies on them. The tribunal in its last proceeding on Sept 6 had recorded statements of five MLOs from the two hospitals.

The tribunal, which was set up in June by the Sindh government with the terms of reference being “to find out (the) reasons and people behind the widespread violence in which 10 people were killed and more than 60 vehicles were set on fire”, adjourned its proceedings till Sept 20 after hearing a total of 20 witnesses.

At least 10 people lost their lives – six of them were burnt to death in an arson attack on Tahir Plaza on M.A. Jinnah Road – when violence erupted in the city after groups of lawyers clashed at the City Courts a day after the manhandling of former federal minister Dr Sher Afgan Khan Niazi in Lahore.

Police record shows that a total of five people were wounded in the day-long violence and 61 vehicles were set on fire in the large-scale violence in different parts of the city. For the next proceedings, the tribunal summoned the SPs of the special branch, the security and the CID with other police officers who either registered the FIRs of the April 9 incidents or investigated such cases.

In their statements, some 14 owners or drivers of different vehicles appeared before the tribunal and described the familiar incidents when their vehicles were intercepted by charged youths in different parts of the city and set on fire. In some of the cases, drivers of the vehicles were also beaten up.

Four witnesses, whose three cars and a jeep were attacked while they were parked near the City Courts and Tahir Plaza, told the tribunal that they came to know about the incident only after their vehicles were burnt or damaged by the unknown persons while they were busy in their work.

The affected people having buses and other public transport vehicles, in their statements, described the same trend of violence in different parts of the city, which according to their accounts occurred between 3pm and 9pm. The 18 witnesses whose vehicles were burnt by miscreants on April 9 have not got any compensation from the government. However, none of them came up with any identity or recognition of the persons involved in the violence.

“The tribunal asked each of the witnesses but no one identified the miscreants,” the Additional Advocate-General Mr Khan responded to a question by reporters while talking outside the courtroom after the proceedings.