KARACHI, March 21: The Coordination Committee of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement has strongly criticized police for their attempt to protect the bus driver who is responsible for the road accident in Karimabad in which two college girls and a young man died and nine others were injured.

The committee demanded of President Musharraf to take urgent steps to curb reckless driving, remove illegal bus stands that had mushroomed in the city, to hand down on-the-spot punishment to drivers violating traffic rules, inspect buses, minibuses and coaches through snap checking, cancel route permits be of vehicles plying without fitness certificates, provide all necessaries to meet emergency in government hospitals, give stringent punishment to the driver who killed the two innocent students and the young man and to take disciplinary action against the police officials involved in protecting the killer driver.

The projects presented by the Haq Parast leadership to make the traffic system coordinated and effective, including the Karachi Mass Transit Programme, construction of the Northren bypass and revitalization of the Karachi Circular Railway, be implemented, it said.

The committee made these demands during a press conference at Karachi Press Club on Thursday, which was addressed by Deputy Convener of the MQM Nasreen Jalil, Kunwar Khalid Younus and Abdul Qadir Lakhani. Later, Dr Farooq Sattar also joined them.

Sympathizing with the affected families, Nasreen Jalil said: “Police, instead of arresting the driver, baton charged young men and elderly people who were helping with the shifting of the injured students to hospital.”

She demanded compensation to the affected families. She said according to witnesses and newspaper reports policemen posted at a nearby police picket, instead of arresting the driver, helped him to escape, though later on the driver and the owner of the bus had been arrested. She expressed concern over the attempts by police to describe the accident as an ordinary incident and over a report by an inspector of the Motor Vehicle Department that the accident took place due to brake failure and the driver was no at fault.

“Most of the public transport vehicles in Karachi are owned by police officials, so attempts are made to save the persons responsible for such tragedies. This is the reason who no action is taken against reckless driving,” she said.

She appealed to drivers, owners of vehicles and traffic police to respect human life.