Though the fire tenders have doused the fire that engulfed a superstore in Karachi on Jail Chorangi after a hectic effort of 37 hours, but the fire consumed the life of a young man who happened to join the retail store just a day before the horrible incident, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Friday.
The fire which started on Wednesday morning and could not be controlled till Friday presented a great hazard to scores of residential flats on the upper storey of the superstore where as many as 600 people have been residing. The flats were immediately evacuated.
The Sindh Building Authority has lodged a case with Ferozwala police station against the mart owners and the administration. The case was registered as the owners built the store on a space allotted for a parking lot.
A young man was burnt to death while three other persons got injured in the incident.
According to BBC, the rookie who was hired by the store just a day before the fire incident was identified as Muhammad Wasiuddin. He was just 21 years old.
According to Wasi’s friend Muhammad Tayyab, Wasi was doing his BS and he was a very intelligent student. He said his father had got retired and Wasi was the youngest among his four siblings.
The friend further told that Wasi used to bear expenses of his education himself by doing odd jobs. He was overjoyed when he passed the interview for the job at the superstore on Tuesday. He got a job in the IT department of the store.
But no one knows what was in his destiny as death brought the poor young man to this store.
His family was totally unaware of the tragic news as what had happened to Wasi who went to the store dressed up in his best clothes and shoes on the first day of his job.
They came to know of the incident when they turned their TV on. They tried to contact Wasi, but his mobile was not answering.
Wasi’s brother Murtaza Siddiqui said when they got the news, they rushed to the hospital. People who were in the hospital told the family that a dead body was lying on a charpoy at the emergency gate of the hospital. The body had been lying there for the last four hours and a policeman was standing beside the body, they said adding that the Edhi people came and shifted the body to the morgue.
Mutaza lamented that they were not informed yet how his brother died. Not a single official from government or administration contacted the family. He said as per the people’s account, it seemed that his brother died without getting any medical help.
Reporter Daniyal Syed