PIA plane crash: Ahmed Mujtaba's family worried as Karachi, Lahore labs identify body differently

KARACHI: The family of Ahmed Mujtaba — a victim of the horrific May 22 PIA plane crash — have yet to find closure as a body, suspected to be his, was identified differently by laboratories in Lahore and Karachi

Mujtaba, who died when Flight PK-8308 crashed in Karachi's residential neighbourhood, Model Colony, last month, is yet to identified properly while the samples from one body suspected to be his have been identified differently.

The laboratory in Karachi said body No. 112 identified by its counterpart in Lahore as that of Ahmed Mujtaba's was of Abdul Qayyum, a steward of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) who has already been buried.

When the young man's family went to receive the body, they were informed it had been sent to Lahore. The Karachi lab said there were only three remaining bodies that could not be identified but none of them were of Mujtaba's.

Speaking to Geo News, Mujtaba's brother said: "We were told our [DNA] samples did not match the existing bodies. No one is telling us anything about where is the body."

His father said DNA samples had been taken from the family three times in total. "After identifying Abdul Qayyum's body, they took DNA samples from us twice.

"No institution cooperating with us in identifying my son's body," Mujtaba's father added.

The family said the Edhi Foundation and Chhipa Welfare Association had told them some people took some bodies by force. "The behaviour of the police surgeon and Karachi administration is not okay," the family added.

The families of plane crash victims have multiple time complained that the authorities are not helping them and they were running from pillar to post to get the bodies of their loved ones.

Karachi’s Polani family, according to a news report in this paper, could not get the body of one of their family members due to mismanagement and nonchalant attitude on the part of the provincial government and the PIA.

A relative of Zain Polani, who along with his wife and three children perished in the incident, shared that body of Zain’s eldest son was not handed over to them as another family had already claimed the body.

Massive discrepancies on part of the Sindh government had prompted families of the victims of the ill-fated flight PK-8304 to collectively help each other in identifying bodies.

For this purpose, with the assistance of the airline, the families also sent their DNA samples to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) in Lahore after collecting swabs on their own.