As 64 bodies of the May 22 plane crash incident have so far been identified, the bereaved families continue to bury their loved ones.
Senior journalist Ansar Naqvi and Squadron Leader Zain-ul-Arif Khan were among the unfortunate victims of the deadly plane crash whose funeral prayers were offered on Saturday in Karachi.
Except for two survivors, 97 passengers and crew members of the flight that crashed in a residential area near the Karachi airport were confirmed dead. However, no resident of the Jinnah Garden area in Model Colony, where the plane crashed, died in the incident.
As most of the bodies were charred beyond recognition due to the plane immediately catching fire following the crash, the authorities had to take samples of the bodies and the passengers’ family members for the DNA testing to identify the bodies.
So far, 64 bodies of the plane crash tragedy have been identified, of which the identification of 25 was accomplished through DNA tests. Of the 33 unidentified bodies, 22 have been kept at the Edhi morgue and 11 at the Chhipa morgue and their identification process is under way.
Senior journalist and a former employee of The News Syed Ansar Naqvi, who had been lately serving at a news channel as its senior director for current affairs and programming was one of the victims of the unfortunate plane. His body was identified through the DNA test on Friday.
The funeral prayers for Naqvi were offered in Karachi after Asr prayers on Saturday at a mosque in Askari-IV. He had planned to spend Eid holidays with his family in Hyderabad for which he was coming to Karachi from Lahore in the ill-fated plane.
His wife Rana had gone to the airport to receive him when she received the news about the plane crash. He had initially decided to travel to Hyderabad by road as his seat had not been confirmed but later boarded the plane after the confirmation of seat at the eleventh hour.
The funeral prayers for Squadron Leader Zain-ul-Arif Khan, who also passed away in the PK-8303 plane crash on May 22, were offered at the PAF Base Faisal. According to a statement issued by the Pakistan Air Force, Khan was posted at the Air Headquarters Islamabad and was travelling to Karachi to celebrate Eidul Fitr with his parents.
His body was identified with the help of DNA and was handed over to the PAF authorities for burial. Air Vice-Marshal Ahmad Hassan, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff (engineering) and Air Vice-Marshal Abbas Ghumman along with a large number of PAF officers, civil and military officials and relatives of the martyred officer attended the funeral.
Khan was laid to rest at the PAF graveyard, Korangi Creek with full military honours.
On May 22, the Karachi-bound PIA flight carrying 99 passengers had crashed in the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir right outside the airport's boundary wall only a few seconds before it was to make an emergency landing. Only two passengers survived the crash who included the chief executive of the Bank of Punjab and a young engineer.
Meanwhile, the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi (KU), has announced that the Sindh Forensic DNA and Serology Laboratory (SFDL) at KU will complete the process of identifying the bodies of the air crash victims in the next 48 hours.
The SFDL has completed a total of 27 crossmatch so far and their reports have also been dispatched to the Sindh police.
According to the SFDL, they received a total of 67 samples from the families of the victims while the police department sent them 69 samples of the victims.
It is pertinent to mention here that the SFDL is the first of its kind facility in Sindh that specialises in the detection, identification and analysis of human DNA from evidence samples collected by the law enforcement agencies from crime scenes.
The laboratory has been set up at the Jamil-ur-Rahman Centre for Genome Research, which works as part of the Dr Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research at KU.