Red tape adds to agonies of crash victim kin

KARACHI: Arif Iqbal Farooqi stands outside the emergency room of Karachi’s Jinnah Hospital.

Friday’s tragic plane crash has left him devastated as the fateful flight carried his wife Fauzia Arjumand, 15-year-old son Ishmail Farooqi, 13-year-old daughter Anaya Farooqi and 5-year-old daughter Ayeleen.

His wife, Fauzia, was coming to Karachi to meet her mother who is in the final stages of the breast cancer. The children had also expressed their desire to meet their grandmother in her last days and Fauzia’s brother had booked urgent tickets to Karachi a few hours before the deadly flight.

The children were happy to meet their grandmother and spend Eid at her home.

Before taking off, they took their pictures and sent them to their father as soon as they boarded the plane. These are the last pictures of his lost family – pictures that Farooqi keeps reverting to.

With tears in his eyes and a trembling voice, he recalls the tragic PIA incident.

“A few minutes before the flight was supposed to land, I started receiving calls from my relatives who inquired as to which flight the children and wife were on.

“Then someone told me that a plane coming to Karachi had crashed near the airport. This piece of news hit me like a thunderbolt.”

Farooqi said his friends and relatives tried to console him that the passengers are likely to survive but he could hardly belief them as he knew that there was slim chances of survival in a plane crash.

Meanwhile, his brother-in-law Faizullah was waiting to receive his sister, nieces and nephew at Karachi airport. Moments later, the news of plane crash was confirmed at the airport.

“Faizullah rushed to the site of the incident. He was the first person among the relatives of the passengers to reach the scene of the tragedy and witnessing the horror first-hand.

“He started searching for his sister, nephew and nieces but was told by the rescue personnel that the injured and the dead were being shifted to Jinnah Hospital.”  Farooqi also narrated how he reached Karachi, rushed to the morgues and started search for the bodies of his wife and children.

“A day before her departure to Karachi, I had given my wife gift of a ring with the help of which his wife’s body was identified.  She was also wearing a bracelet and a watch but her identification would have been difficult without the ring.”

His eldest daughter, Anaya, was identified by the clothes and the bands she wore on her hand. A part of her sleeves had also not burnt.  She had messaged him a few pictures of her flight a few hours before which helped in her identification.

He said Fauzia and Anaya were buried in the Model Town cemetery, a graveyard very close to the plane crash site. However, the bodies of 15-year-old Ismail and five-year-old Ayeleen have not been identified.

Red tapes and interrogations

Farooqi said the search for the loved ones and the associated process of verification and documentation for retrieving the bodies has been extremely painful for him.

“I am tired of going from one hospital to another, paying visits to mortuaries and police stations and dealing with MLOs [Medical Legal Officers].”

“PIA just provided air tickets and hotel facility in Karachi.  However, all other expenses with regard to retrieval and burial of bodies are being borne by the families.

“Families of the victims are being subjected to traditional red tapes at all stages. The federal government, the Sindh government, PIA officials and the administration have left us alone,” he said.

He said it was an arduous job to retrieve dead bodies after their identification.

“We were assured that the bodies would be handed over from the morgues after the normal procedure, but when we arrived to collect the bodies for burial, we had to go through a lot of hardships.”

He said these difficulties are not over as MLO certificates are required from the hospitals to get the death certificate before which bodies cannot be released. Dealing with the MLOs and police personnel is painful as their investigations and questions seem to be never ending, he added.

Farooqi went to Jinnah Hospital on Tuesday to get a death certificate, where he was questioned by police for an hour, and police questioned him about how he had retrieved the body from the morgue without police action.

After an hour-long interrogation during which official saw all evidence and proofs, two separate statements were written. However, they did not issue any death certificate, saying that the certificate for the deceased woman was supposed to be given by a female doctor.

No dedicated helpline

Farooqi said the government should have made a dedicated helpline so that the relatives would not have any difficulty in following the procedures and receiving the bodies.

“There is a lack of trust between Sindh and federal governments over the procedures required for the handing over of bodies. The Sindh and federal government teams are conducting separate DNA tests. Prime Minister Imran Khan is missing after issuing a condolence statement.”

Grieving that his entire family including the young children were the victims of the incident, he said he supported Imran Khan’s party and his children even used to go to the sit-ins staged by PTI in the past.

Farooqi appealed to the prime minister to set up a helpline in collaboration with the provincial government to find a quick solution to the problems faced by the bereaved.

“The government should appoint a focal person who will provide a solution to the problems faced by the survivors of the plane crash. There is no such arrangement for the guidance of the bereaved families anywhere in Jinnah Hospital,” he said.

He said he has been searching for bodies of his children on his own, there were bodies of children in the morgues but they were not identifiable. People are burying their loved ones without final confirmation.

“However, the bodies should be buried after proper identification because if this is not done, many families would insist to have the bodies exhumed after burials.”

He said identification of 100 bodies is not a difficult task but it appears that the federal government is not taking up the matter appropriately. People do not even know which hospital to go to for identification of the bodies and have no clue how to get a death certificate.

“The process of DNA has its own problems. Why is this lack of coordination between Sindh and the federal government?” Farooqi appealing to Prime Minister Imran Khan to take notice of the situation and set up a central helpline to alleviate the plight of the bereaved families.