The Sindh Local Government Department on Wednesday suspended multiple officials following the death of a three-year-old child, who fell into an open manhole in Karachi’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal area.
The development comes shortly after Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah chaired a meeting on the incident, which took place near the Nipa flyover.
Copies of the suspension notifications, available with Geo News, showed the suspended officials include Imran Ahmed Rajput, senior director of municipal services at the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, and Rashid Fayyaz, assistant executive engineer at the Town Municipal Corporation, Gulshan-e-Iqbal.
Similarly, the executive engineer of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation, Waqar Ahmed, has been suspended.
Other suspended officials include Gulshan-e-Iqbal Assistant Commissioner Aamir Ali Shah and Gulshan-e-Iqbal Mukhtiarkar Salman Farsi.
Tragedy struck the city on Sunday night when the boy, the only child of his parents, fell into an uncovered manhole that had reportedly been without a lid for several days.
People pooled money to bring in machinery themselves in a desperate bid to rescue the child. However, he was found 14 hours later — on Monday morning — with eyewitnesses saying state machinery arrived only after hours of delay.
Meanwhile, Karachi police have formed a three-member inquiry committee to probe the incident.
The committee, constituted under the Karachi police chief Javed Alam Odho, includes Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) East DIG Admin Ahmed Nawaz Cheema, and SSP Investigation Central Anum Tajammul.
According to police, the body will determine responsibility for the incident and submit its report to the Karachi police chief upon completion of the inquiry.
As part of the investigation, the SSP investigation central visited the residence of the deceased child. A police delegation met the bereaved family and began recording their statements.
