SHC to hear urgent petition about air crashes today.

Byline: Ishaq Tanoli and Naeem Sahoutara

KARACHI -- The Sindh High Court on Thursday allowed an application seeking urgent hearing of a petition about various incidents of air crashes and fixed it for hearing on Friday (today).

The petitioner filed an application for urgent hearing of his petition filed in 2016 and also informed the bench that the A320 aircraft of Pakistan International Airlines carrying 99 passengers and crew members crashed in a residential area near Karachi airport on May 22, leaving 97 people dead.

The two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar allowed the application and fixed the petition for hearing on May 29.

In January, the SHC had issued a show-cause notice to the aviation department secretary for not submitting a progress report regarding a pending inquiry into the ATR aircraft crash in 2016. The SHC was informed that the inquiry was being conducted by an aircraft accident investigation and inquiry board at the federal capital under the aviation division.

The petition was filed after an Islamabad-bound flight of the national flag carrier had crashed near Abbottabad after it took off from Chitral on Dec 7, 2016 in which 42 passengers and crew, including singer-turned-preacher Junaid Jamshed and his wife, lost their lives.

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Impleading the PIA, CAA and others as respondents, the petitioner argued that there had been various incidents where ATR planes of the PIA crashed, killing many people.

He further maintained that after the occurrence of such incidents in the past, it was the constitutional obligation of the cabinet division secretary, the CAA director general and the PIA chairman to stop buying the 'outdated' planes, using them and risking the lives of passengers and crew.

The petitioner further contended that despite having knowledge of the defects and malfunctioning of ATRs, the PIA and other respondents did not take any precautionary measures to prevent such incidents.

He pleaded for a judicial inquiry to fix responsibility on the relevant officials for it, prosecute them and order payment of compensation to the heirs of the crash victims.

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