KARACHI, June 10: For Zaitoon Awan, the faintest hopes of seeing her son, missing since the October 18, 2007 bomb attacks on Benazir Bhutto’s welcome procession near Karsaz, have vanished. According to the police, one of the 14 unclaimed human remains buried at the Garhi Khuda Bakhsh cemetery have scientifically been matched with 18-year-old Rizwan’s.

The worrisome aspect of the police findings is attributed to official apathy shown by the investigators and further aggravated by the affairs at the Dr A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (KIBGE), which was earlier entrusted with the task of DNA matching of the remains with the blood samples of the affected families to determine the fate of untraced people.

“Six months after the incident in April, we were told by the police and KIBGE that it was impossible to match the DNA profiles of the remains with the family members of the missing,” says Rizwan’s elder brother Farooq Awan, as he sits beside his mother in an apartment in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, while tears well up in their eyes.

“About two weeks ago we were called again by the police for fresh blood samples to be sent to Islamabad to match them with the DNA profiles of the remains recovered from the site, which were later buried in Larkana. Now our search seems over, as they (the police) have reported that our blood samples have matched with one of those DNA profiles of the buried remains.”

The police authorities have confirmed Farooq’s disclosure after they received the findings from a facility in Islamabad, which marked a total of three persons missing after the incident as dead.

“The government actually allocated fresh funds for the task and ordered the police to carry out the task in the shortest possible time,” says a police official, supervising the whole process.

He singles out Rizwan Awan, Bilal Saeedi and another missing person with the father’s name Mohammad Javed, all from Karachi, among the latest confirmed victims of the tragedy, who were untraced since the blasts.

“We sent blood samples after collecting them from nearly 10 families but have finally received reports of three. However, we expect results of others in the days to come,” he says.

Though the established fate of three missing persons might cause unending grief to their families, the police are satisfied that the exercise has brought some closure to the matter and made the families accept the fact.

But at the same time, the latest development in the fiasco has put a question mark over the discipline and accountability within the police and other institutions concerned, as the nine-month exercise has returned the desperate families only shocks.

First, the police delayed the delivery of the blood samples to the institute and then it was the KIBGE that took more than six months to finalise the process, which remained without result for the families of the missing persons.

Instead, the scientists at the institute focused on DNA profiling only on the remains of the suspected suicide bomber. This disclosure has come as a rude shock to the inefficient police force relying heavily on the scientific expertise of the prestigious institute.

“We are very much disappointed with the attitude of the institutions concerned,” says Habib Jan, a leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), who coordinated the whole exercise between the government and the missing persons’ families.

“We approached the police a few weeks ago through the affected families and made sure that the desired results were achieved this time. We simply wanted to trace our people and in this modern age, it should be a simple task.”

Though the police authorities and the PPP leadership seem quite satisfied with the latest laboratory reports from Islamabad, the families of the missing persons are still in a fix whether to accept the latest findings.

“We have been given the dodge so many times that it may take time to convince the family members,” says Farooq Awan. “If this is the reality, it could have been established much earlier. There is no one to justify this delay and elaborate the reasons behind this lethargic process.”

Despite all the confusion and disbelief, he left for Larkana late on Thursday to get his brother’s remains exhumed.

“We will hopefully bring his (Rizwan’s) remains back on Friday afternoon for burial in the Paposh Nagar graveyard. This may lighten the burden we have been carrying on our hearts for the last nine months.”