RAWALPINDI, Aug 20: Two young cousins who died while doing wheelies last Sunday had been captured earlier in the week by the Airport police during a campaign against ‘stuntmen’.

But they were released after their parents intervened.

“Parents of the two cousins strongly condemned the police for taking them into custody,” the officer dealing with the case revealed. Requesting anonymity, he said the police had no choice but to release them along with their motorbikes.

But their tragic death on the Independence Day on last Sunday shocked the officer.

“We were stunned when we heard that the two young men killed while doing wheelies near Jhanda Chichi were those we had captured early in the week during campaign against wheelies.”

The officer said if the parents had prevented their sons from doing such stunts, the fate of the family would have been different.

Shamoon Masih and Waqas Masih were doing wheelies on their motorbike – RIZ-4195 – on Jhanda Chichi Road in the wee hours of last Sunday when it went out of control. It crashed into concrete blocks placed in the middle of the road. They died on the spot. Only a few hours earlier the city district administration had also clamped section 144 to prevent teenagers from showing stunts on motorbikes.

The two cousins had left their homes telling their parents that they were going to make a trip of the city on their motorcycle to see how people were celebrating the Independence Day, but they did not return alive.

The two young men who were between 20 and 22 year of age had been working at a gas filling station.

Several young boys driving motorbikes on one wheel are being treated in the city’s hospitals daily. Despite section 144 in the city, the acrobats by the young people are still seen on various city roads.