The bodies of the four people who died in the Greek coastal boat accident reached their native places in Gujrat and Gujranwala districts on Friday.
One of them, Tahir, belonged to Niyamatpura village along the Sargodha road in Gujrat. Tahir and his brother Qaiser went to Libya for further travel to Italy after paying Rs 2.5 lakh to the human smugglers.
However, both the brothers drowned, but Tahir’s body has not been identified out of the total 89 bodies recovered from the sea so far. About 350 Pakistanis belonging to Gujarat and Mandi Bahauddin districts were on board the ill-fated boat.
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Out of the 12 identified bodies of Pakistanis, 6 are from Gujrat. A team of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) had obtained DNA samples from the relatives of the victims at the FIA’s Gujarat police station about a month ago.
The other two bodies that arrived on Friday were those of Abdul Waheed and Sufyan Abbas of Daulatnagar village. The relatives received the dead bodies at the airport and transported them in ambulances to their native areas where funeral prayers were offered before burial.
One of the brothers of the deceased Tahir and Qaiser told reporters that Tahir left behind two children and a widow while Qaiser left five children and a widow, the family is devastated. He appealed to the government to take steps to bring the bodies of the survivors of the incident as they want to bury their near and dear ones with their own hands.
Meanwhile, relatives of several other victims who have lost hope of finding their loved ones have started organizing funeral prayers in absentia in different areas of Gujrat and Mandi Bahauddin. Zeeshan Akhtar Paswal’s funeral prayer will be offered at 12.30 pm on Saturday (today) at Kot Bela village on the outskirts of the city.
