KARACHI: Another member of the same family died during treatment on Saturday, taking the death toll to six in the “poisonous food” tragedy, officials said.

Ms Bina, who was admitted to the Aga Khan University Hospital, died during treatment, confirmed South SSP Pir Mohammed Shah.

Five siblings — three brothers and two sisters — had died on Friday morning after consuming “toxic food” which they had ordered from a restaurant in Saddar while staying at Qasr-i-Naz, a federal government official residence near the State Guest House where the family had stayed after their arrival from Balochistan on Thursday.

The senior officer said that she was an aunt of the dead siblings.

The SSP said the cause of death of all six family members appeared to be the same food.

32 persons detained briefly, 33 samples collected for lab testing, two restaurants sealed

The children were aged between one-and-a-half years and nine years while their aunt was in her early 20s.

Quoting the mother of the children, the SSP said that even the one-and-a-half-year-old boy had also eaten the biryani, which they had ordered from the restaurant in Saddar.

Sharing initial findings of the case, SSP Pir Mohammed Shah told Dawn that the children’s mother started vomiting and collapsed inside the bathroom at around 3.30am.

Her husband, Faisal, assumed that she had suffered a heart attack and rushed her to the AKUH, where she got first aid. When the couple returned to their room at Qasr-i-Naz at around 9am on Friday, they were shocked to see that their two children were already dead and three others were unconscious. Faisal’s sister was also barely able to speak.

Then Faisal took his five children and sister to the AKUH again at around 10am where all the five children were pronounced dead.

Quoting the doctors, the South SSP said that the children had died around half an hour before their arrival at the hospital. He said the children’s mother survived because of timely treatment. Since there was no more room in an air ambulance, the couple had already left for Quetta by a commercial flight on Friday evening while the bodies of their children were later on flown by the air ambulance for burial in Balochistan.

The officer said that Faisal Kakar is a local landlord in Balochistan.

The two restaurants which supplied the food to the family had been sealed for investigation.

The officer said that they had detained several employees of both restaurants with some staff of Qasr-i-Naz and they were released after getting their statements. Till late in the evening no FIR had been registered.

Pir Mohammed Shah said that he had phoned Faisal, father of the deceased children in Balochistan, and asked him for giving a statement through WhatsApp for lodging of an FIR.

“Police are now solely relying on findings of the labs to ascertain the exact cause of deaths, to determine the course of investigation,” said the officer.

Post-mortem examinations of all the five children were done at Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi on Friday and the body viscera would be sent to Lahore.

The South SSP disclosed that they could not send the autopsy reports of the children to Lahore’s forensic lab on Saturday as it was the weekend. Therefore, the viscera have been kept in cold storage for preservation, which would be sent to Lahore on Monday.

32 persons detained

Police have detained at least 32 people from three different places and collected 33 samples along with a team of the Sindh Food Authority and KU’s HEJ, while a famous biryani restaurant, which supplied biryani to another restaurant in Saddar, had also been sealed, said DIG South Sharjeel Kharal.

The senior officer told Dawn that 32 people had been detained from the restaurant from where the family bought biryani from, as well as the eatery which had originally supplied the biryani.

The DIG said the two restaurants and the room, store and kitchen of Qasr-i-Naz had also been sealed for investigations.

Dr Shakeel Ahmed of HEJ Research Centre of Karachi University told Dawn that they had collected 11 samples which included vomits, clothes, powder, blankets and floor from the Qasr-i-Naz room.

Director general of the Sindh Food Authority Amjad Leghari told Dawn that they had taken the samples of the food, which would be sent to the technical lab located in Korangi. Mr Leghari clarified that they also sealed the biryani restaurant because it originally supplied the foodstuff to the other eatery as the food boxes obtained from the room carried its name.

Govt chemical lab remains ‘closed’

The death of five siblings and their aunt apparently caused by toxic food in the city on Friday once again highlighted the lack of an official laboratory in the province to ascertain the exact cause of the deaths, prompting the authorities to send the victims’ viscera to Punjab’s forensic lab for an identical purpose, it emerged on Saturday.

Sources in medico-legal section told Dawn that the samples of the five children had been collected to be sent to the Sindh government’s chemical examiner’s lab located on the premises of the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi, but the lab had been “closed” for the last several months as the chief chemical examiner had been removed for “unprofessionally” conducting tests of the “liquor” seized from a room of the hospital in Clifton where a politician was lodged in a sub-jail during a visit by the then chief justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar.

The sources said that recently another official had been appointed as chief chemical examiner, but so far the lab had not issued any report of samples sent to it pertaining to poison or poisonous substance or food.

The samples were gathering dust there and bad smell was emitting from it, said the sources.

An official in the medico-legal section told Dawn on condition of anonymity that they had sent samples pertaining to poison to the KU lab recently but the officials concerned told them that the provincial government had only asked them for DNA tests, not for poison tests.

The sources said that since the provincial government’s chemical examiner’s lab was not “functioning properly”, the viscera were being sent to Lahore for ascertaining the exact cause of deaths of the five children and their young aunt.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2019