Two buses torched as killing of schoolgirl triggers protest
KARACHI: The killing of a five-year-old schoolgirl in a traffic accident on Friday morning sparked violence as enraged people torched two buses involved in a deadly race on main M.A. Jinnah Road that resulted in the fatal accident.
While police failed to arrest the two bus drivers from the scene of the crime, they took into custody about a dozen people and booked them under antiterror laws. One of the drivers was arrested later in the evening.
Saddar SP Tauqeer Mohammed Naeem said that two buses of route 4-K and 4-Q were racing on main M.A. Jinnah Road; one of the fast-moving buses, in a bid to overtake the other, hit a motorcycle near Saeed Manzil.
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He said that the motorcyclist, Huzaifa, and his daughter Sakeena riding pillion fell on the road, but the recklessly driven bus did not stop and ran over the girl.
The CCTV footage reviewed by the police later revealed that the bus driver got off the vehicle, saw the girl lying on the road, but chose to walk away from the scene. The second driver also abandoned his bus and escaped.
A number of people rushed to the scene and shifted the wounded man and his daughter to the nearby Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital, where doctors pronounced the girl dead on arrival.
Additional Police Surgeon Qarar Abbasi said that the girl’s father was being treated at the trauma centre.
The police said that the accident took place at 7.30am and the man was heading to drop his daughter to her school.
Meanwhile, angry people set both the buses on fire and pelted other public transport vehicles with stones.
A fire brigade official said that they got information about the incident at 8.58am and one fire tender was immediately despatched but the mob manhandled the firemen and stop them from putting out the fire.
He said that three police mobile vans led by the area DSP were present there but they did not intervene. Finally, firemen escorted by Rangers reached the scene again at 9.17am and extinguished the fire. However, by that time both the buses were completely destroyed.