Keenjhar Lake boat tragedy: SHC orders Thatta DC, SSP to appear before court on 27th

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC), while expressing its annoyance on Wednesday over the tragic incident in which 10 people drowned in the Keenjhar Lake due to overturning of their boat, ordered the Deputy Commissioner and the SSP of Thatta to appear before the court on August 27.

A division bench of the SHC, headed by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, issued these orders after a lawyer filed a petition at the Sindh High Court seeking measures for making the boat rides in Thatta safer a day after 10 people drowned in the Keenjhar Lake.

Nadeem Shaikh said in his petition that the number of cases of boat accidents being reported these days had increased. There was no law or policy regulating the boat rides from Keenjhar to the shrine of Noori Jam Tamachi.

There should be a law regulating the people who operated those boat rides, he said, adding that those who took those rides weren't even provided with life jackets, and the operators of those boats took more passengers in than the capacity of those boats.

The petitioner said that an investigation should be conducted against the SP and the SHO, among others.

The court sought the inquiry report on the SOPs for the boats plying the lake.

Justice Mazhar asked why the overcrowded boats were not checked in which twenty people were made to sit against the capacity of four people.

"When a tragedy happens then a notice is taken, and all administration reached the spot," he remarked.

The Sindh government's attorney during the hearing expressed his grief over the death of people.

"What an expression of grief would do. Why the orders of the court issued in 2017 after a similar incident of drowning of many persons in the lake were not followed?" Justice Mazhar asked the lawyer of the provincial government.

The bench said that additional police force should be deployed to check the condition of the boats.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020