BAHAWALPUR: Three men were burnt alive in the driver’s cabin of a parked trailer and another was injured when it caught fire after being hit by another vehicle at Dera Bakha toll plaza, about 15kms from here, on Hasilpur highway near Bahawalpur city at dawn on Wednesday.

According to Rescue 1122 District Emergency Officer (DEO) Baqir Hussain, a trailer laden with rice sacks was parked at the toll plaza when another trailer coming from Hasilpur rammed into it.

After the collision, the parked trailer suddenly caught fire, which engulfed the vehicle in no time.

As a result, the three men sitting in the driver’s cabin of the parked trailer, identified as Tahir, Asif and Hammad, belonging to Talagang, got trapped and were burnt alive.

A Rescue 1122 team, reaching the spot on an emergency call, retrieved the charred bodies of the three men after cutting the iron frame of the driver’s cabin.

Another man, Imran, who was injured in the incident, was shifted to the Bahawal Victoria Hospital (BVH).

The Lalsohanra police reached the scene and started investigation.

SUSPECT INJURED: A suspected criminal suffered serious injuries in an alleged police encounter near Shahpur Phal village in the limits of Saddar police station, Kahror pucca.

According to police, the arrested suspect, Fayyaz Luthar, allegedly involved in 11 criminal cases, was being taken for physical remand, when three armed motorcyclists, including

Fayyaz’s brother Sajjad Luthar, also wanted in a murder case, opened fire on police to free the suspect. The police returned the fire.

The police claimed that during the crossfire, Fayyaz was hit by bullets fired by his accomplices, who managed to flee.

The police shifted the injured suspect to the kahrorepucca THQ Hospital and later registered a cases against the attackers.

UPGRADED: The engineering wing of the Radio Pakistan, Bahawalpur station, has been upgraded at a cost of Rs1.8 million with the installation of modern machinery.

This was announced by the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) Director-General Saeed Ahmed Sheikh on Wednesday during a special programme broadcasted by Bahawalpur station on the occasion of its 49th anniversary.

He said that another sum of Rs200,000 would soon be released for the renovation of Bahawalpur radio station’s studios.

Mr Sheikh claimed that the Radio Pakistan had million of listeners across the globe, while it had 2.7m followers on Facebook and 1m on X (formerly twitter).

The DG said that during the current year the old transmitters of the Quetta and Khuzdar radio stations would also be replaced with new digital ones.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2024