ISLAMABAD, May 8: The city police have turned down the request of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to hand it over the belongings of Bhoja Air plane crash victims, saying they were case property and the authority should approach a magistrate for this purpose, sources in the police and the city administration told Dawn on Tuesday.
In response to the written request made to the chief commissioner, the police asked the CAA to get the belongings on superdari from the court of the magistrate concerned.
The Kural police registered a criminal case over the air crash in which all the 127 passengers, including six crew members, on board were killed on April 20. However, belongings of 40 of the victims were handed over to their legal heirs on the direction of the area magistrate when they approached him.
The CAA made the request through the airport manager Mr Ashfaq to get possession of all the remains, including wreckage of the plane and belongings of the victims, as its safety investigation board was to examine them to determine the cause of the air crash. The request was made when the CAA got the information that the police were handing over the belongings to the victims’ heirs on superdari which could hamper the investigation to establish the cause of the crash.
Under the law, the remains of such an incident are the property of the CAA. Besides, the authority is responsible for handing over of the belongings of the victims to their legal heirs.
The officer said the possession of the wreckage was being given to the CAA while the bodies were handed over to their legal heirs. The remaining unidentified body parts were buried at H-11 graveyard in 12 separate graves, he added.
He said the black box and the cockpit voice recorder were not in the possession of the police as they were handed over to the CAA by the Capital Development Authority. The belongings of the victims were collected from hospital, Rescue 1122, army andother teams and given in the custody of Kural police.
The administration informed the CAA that all the belongings of the victims were kept in the police station and it should nominate a focal person to collect them.
Meanwhile, there were reports that some credit and debit cards of three of the victims were used in different spots, including at a filling station and a store at Saddar.
When contacted, the Kural police said it had received two separate calls from different persons saying the cards were used in a filling station and a store for shopping. However, when the police asked the callers to identify the filling station and the store, they failed to reply.