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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Brothers who died of ‘food poisoning’ laid to rest amid broken hearts and teary eyes

By Faraz Khan
November 13, 2018

The unfortunate mother was not even aware that her two young sons had passed away. As she battled for her own life, her family tried to pacify her that her sons were fine and under treatment.

But she refused to be pacified. In her heart she knew her sons’ lives were in mortal danger. Surrendering to her insistence, her family at last informed her of her sons’ fate. Her husband then brought the children’s bodies to the hospital so she could bid them farewell. It was a heartbreaking scene. There were tears in everyone’s eyes, as the sounds of a painfully distressed mother mourning her minor children pierced the quiet of the hospital ward.

The mother begged for her sons’ lives, desperately clinging on to their lifeless forms lest she never sees them again. She swore she would not be able to live without them. “Please don’t take them away! I can’t live without them,” shouted Aisha. “Please bring them back!”

The family and other relatives took the bodies of the children to Masjid Al-Aisha on Khayaban-e-Ittehad in Karachi’s Defence neighbourhood for the funeral prayers. A large number of people, including neighbours and political figures like Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MNA Aftab Siddiqui, were also present. The ill-fated brothers were laid to rest at a graveyard in Phase-VII.

Eighteen-month-old Ahmed and five-year-old Muhammad lost their lives on Sunday afternoon allegedly due to food poisoning from dining at a restaurant in the Zamzama locality and consuming sweets from a shop outside an amusement park late on Saturday night.

Their mother had also fallen sick and was admitted in Clifton’s South City Hospital, where doctors said that her condition is now stable. Her husband was in Lahore on business when she and their kids fell sick.

The news of the children’s deaths spread like wildfire after the electronic and social media highlighted it, forcing the authorities to take notice and direct the relevant officials to inquire about the incident.

Though a formal case is yet to be registered, the police and the food authority have initiated joint efforts to ascertain the actual cause of death and trace the people responsible. The police had taken the children’s bodies to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where doctors conducted post-mortem examinations. Their reports will be released after the results of the samples sent for chemical and pathological tests come in.

“Apparently the minors died of food poisoning, but nothing can be said for sure until the relevant reports are ready,” a source at the hospital told The News. “Samples from the bodies and blood specimens have been taken, and the chemical analysis reports will be released in five to 10 days to ascertain the actual cause of deaths.”

An investigating committee has been formed comprising South Operations SSP Pir Muhammad Shah, Investigations SSP Tariq Dharejo and Clifton ASP Suhai Aziz. Police said they are investigating the case from different angles, as the kids were taken to the hospital after a delay.

Besides collecting the children’s blood, urine and vomit samples, the investigating team also took a sample from the milk the kids had consumed at home and sent all of them to different private hospitals and institutions to get them tested.

“Now we are going to send the samples to a laboratory in Punjab,” ASP Suhai told The News. “The FIR of the case will be registered after the cause of the death is confirmed.” The investigators have also started questioning people. “So far we have interviewed around 25 people, including the mother and the workers at the restaurant and the shop,” said the ASP.

In her initial statement to the police, the mother had revealed that the sweets had a strange flavour, that her sons had started vomiting around 6am, four hours after reaching home, and that her relatives had taken them to the hospital in the afternoon.

No lab in Sindh

In the absence of any reputed chemical examination lab in Sindh to examine the quality of food as well as to ascertain cause of death due to toxins, samples of food taken from two Karachi eateries and viscera of one of the two minors who died after consuming tainted food in Karachi on Sunday have been sent to a multinational lab and a Lahore-based forensic lab for analysis, M. Waqar Bhatti adds.

Two minor children died and their mother fell seriously sick after consuming food from an eatery and consuming candies from the tuck shop of an amusement park at Sea View, causing a nationwide concern and forcing authorities to seal both the places.

The Sindh Food Authority (SFA) said on Monday they had collected around 30 samples of food and candies from the two eateries in Karachi from where the affected family had taken food and sent these samples to a private multinational lab for examination to ascertain if the food was tainted.

The recently-established Sindh Food Authority came under severe criticism from all quarters after the death of the two children, with civil society and people from all walks of life criticising it and the provincial government for their failure to check food quality in Karachi, which, they said, was resulting in scores of deaths in the city every year.

“We have collected 18 samples from the restaurant and 12 samples of candies and other food items from the tuck shop of the amusement park and sent them to a reputed multinational lab for chemical analysis,” Director SFA Abrar Shaikh told The News.

On the other hand, samples from the body from one of the children were sent to Lahore’s forensic science lab for analysis and to ascertain the cause of death due to the absence of any forensic lab in Sindh.

“Samples from the viscera of a minor who allegedly died due to consuming poisonous food have been sent to Lahore for chemical examination and analysis as Sindh does not has any facility to analyse and ascertain the cause of mortality,” a medico-legal official of the Sindh health department said.

Meanwhile, expressing deep sorrow over the sad demise of the two minor children, the Pakistan Medical Association said it was very much concerned about the quality control of food centres and restaurants in the city.

“It’s the responsibility of the Sindh Food Authority to monitor the quality of food supply to the citizens of Sindh. In this case, the authority completely failed to control the supply of unhygienic and substandard food items being served by restaurant and catering companies,” PMA Karachi Secretary General Dr Abdul Ghfaoor Shoro said.

The PMA demanded of the authorities to take stock of the situation and work against factors that led to this type of incidents and punish those who were involved in this business, he added.