–Karachi police say PFSA should have handed over the findings to investigators
LAHORE: Food samples collected from the house of two children who recently died of alleged food poisoning after dining at a famous restaurant in Karachi last week were found to be free of poison, according to local media reports.
Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) officials have revealed that the tested food samples yielded “no trace of poison such as cyanide, insect killers or any other.”
The agency, while mentioning that it has not been sent any samples from the children’s post-mortem, said that the matter would need to be investigated further.
“To find out if the deaths occurred due to bacteria present in [expired meat], food samples will have to be sent to microbiologists,” the local media quoted PFSA officials.
On November 11, two brothers, 18-month-old Ahmed and five-year-old Muhammad, had passed away after dining out with their parents at Arizona Grill restaurant. The incident resulted in a police investigation that led to the immediate sealing of the restaurant.
On November 13, the restaurant also got its godown sealed after food authorities found ‘expired’ meat and ‘squash’ bottles from the premises during a raid.
‘BREACH OF TRUST’:
Karachi police on Friday said that PFSA allegedly committed “breach of trust” by allegedly informing the media about their findings instead of informing or handing over the findings to the police investigators.
Speaking to a local news outlet, a police official said that they were writing a letter to the agency, telling that this was not an “advisable attitude”. The official also said that the police was not in a position to comment on the reported findings because they had not received any official report or confirmation.
At least 30 samples of eatables and other things which were collected from the house of the deceased brothers were sent for examination to Lahore by air. Besides, four other samples related to the post-mortem examination of the minor brothers were sent through train to Lahore in order to protect the same so that the exact cause of death could be ascertained.
These samples were sent to Punjab as reportedly Sindh government’s laboratory concerned has become ‘non-functional’ lately. The investigators said that they were still probing the cause of death and hoped that PFSA’s findings of post-mortem examination samples might help them to determine the cause of death.
