KARACHI, Feb 21: A headless and decomposed body of a woman was recovered from a storage tank of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board in Gulistan-i-Jauhar late on Friday.
The police said the body, possibly dumped in water several weeks ago, had floated down from the interior of Sindh, passing through the main water conduit of the KWSB to reach the storage facility.
The water board officials, however, contested the police claim on Saturday and said there was no storage tank in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. They said the body was instead recovered from a water chamber in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. It had been stuck there owing to the siphon installed there.
The flow of water carried the body to the filter plant in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, they added. "The unidentified body was retrieved after it stopped hitting the siphon. The water board officials could not pull it out due to legal problems. They informed the police who got rid of it," a senior water board official told Dawn on condition of anonymity.
"We don't know from where it had travelled and how it reached here. When we were informed, we removed the body," the Gulshan-i-Iqbal Town Police Officer, Abdul Khaliq Shaikh, said.
The Gulistan-i-Jauhar police said they came to know of the body late on Friday. An Edhi ambulance was called and the body was retrieved from the KWSB water tank in Block No 1, Gulistan-i-Jauhar.
"We have not registered any case as we don't know exactly where the incident had occurred," said Liaquat, a duty police officer. The police did not even send the body to hospital for a postmortem examination.
Mr Shaikh said the body was headless and it appeared that it was that of a woman. "We have carried out the legal proceedings under section 174 of the CrPC for disposal of the body," he explained. He kept mum when asked if an FIR had been filed in the case.
The police officer said the woman's body might have travelled from Thatta or Dhabeji and the place of the murder was not known yet. Investigations, however, would be carried out in this respect, he added.
Rafiq, a worker at the Edhi Centre near Sohrab Goth, said the body was taken to the morgue at around 1.30am. "The body was so decomposed that it could not be identified. Its bones were exposed and we assessed from the clothes that the body was that of a woman," he said, adding that the body was buried in the Moach Goth graveyard on Saturday afternoon.
The managing director of the KWSB could not be reached for comments, despite repeated attempts. However, a senior official in the water board said water flowed from the interior of the province to the covered chamber after passing through a siphon which had been installed to stop rubbish from getting inside the filter plant.
He said: "The water goes to the COD filter plant in Gulshan-i-Iqbal where many impurities are removed from it. The process of chlorination is also carried out to make the water free of contamination".
He claimed that piped water was clean enough for drinking purposes as the filter plants were capable of making even contaminated water safe.
Meanwhile, a microbiologist told Dawn that until the water tank in question was properly disinfected, water flowing through it could be unsafe for human consumption. "The dead body should be removed as soon as possible," said Dr Altaf Ahmed.
Asked if chlorination at the filter plants could offset the bad effects of the bacteria caused by the dead body, Dr Ahmed said: "This depends on the size of the tank. If the size is so big that the water in it is dilute, then there will be little contamination.
"However, if the tank is not so big then there are considerable chances of contamination."