Gul Plaza Tragedy: 12 more bodies identified

KARACHI: The Sindh Forensic Lab has identified 12 bodies of Gul Plaza fire incident with results increasing the number of identified victims to 39, ARY News reported on Thursday.

In-charge Identification Project Amir Hassan has said that the dead bodies have not been identified with the DNA but with “the proof of presence”. The remains of the identified 12 bodies will be handed over to the aggrieved families.

The proof of presence process has been started. The entry of any body found from a particular shop or the location was made part of the recprd. The bodies were also located by determining the place with the mobile phones locations.

It was traced with various evidences to identify the body parts of a person with a specific location.

The remains were identified of deceased Umar Nabeel, Ayisha, Ali bin Umar Nabeel, Khizar Ali, Haider Ali and Amir Ali. The identities of Abu Bakar, Yaseen, Sadaqatullah, Yousuf Khan, Naimatullah and Abdullah were established with the remains found from the site.

Identification Project in-charge Amir Hassan has also said that the efforts being made to identify the bodies with the DNA.

The “proof of presence” was the last option to identify the fire victims, which is now being used by the identification experts.

Gul Plaza Tragedy

On the night of Saturday, January 17, a massive fire erupted at Gul Plaza on M.A. Jinnah Road, engulfing the shopping mall in flames and trapping dozens of people inside. The blaze was brought under control after more than 32 hours, exposing serious weaknesses in the city’s emergency response mechanism, which struggled to effectively manage the disaster.

Following the operation, the building was declared structurally unsafe and sealed by authorities. Families coordinated with officials through help desks and DNA collection centres, and engineers conducted assessments of the severely damaged building structure.