In the Shangla district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bisham tehsil, a young man drowned on Tuesday while attempting to save his son who was stuck in a manually operated chairlift over the Indus river.
Mansoor Ali Khan, a local witness who was present when the event occurred, informed Dawn.com that Muhammad Aziz, the boy’s father, was attempting to save his 13-year-old son using a rope when he became stuck in the chairlift over the Indus river.
Khan claimed that the father fell into the river and was carried away by the powerful currents when the rope he was using to try to save his son broke.
He claimed that the youngster was still trapped in the chairlift and that locals had to work very hard to free him.
According to another witness, Aziz lived in the Battagram district’s Kund, Allai.
He said that the chairlift, built by the deceased’s uncle, was used by the peasants to cross the river manually.
The family had called Rescue 1122’s Bisham station, but no one responded, according to Aziz’s uncle Torkhan, who spoke with Dawn.com. The youngster had been left alone since 12 p.m.
He claimed that despite Aziz drowning for hours, rescue personnel did not show up to look for his body.
Spokesman for Shangla Rescue 1122 Rasool Khan Sharif said that after receiving a single call, their station was notified that the youngster had been rescued and that the squad did not need to respond.
Locals claimed that these manually driven chairlifts, which are propelled by pulling a metal handle, posed a risk to commuters, particularly on the Indus route, where a body may not be recovered for months.
In addition, Bisham tehsil Assistant Commissioner Adnan Khan sealed the chairlift following the well-known chairlift disaster that occurred in a rural Allai tehsil in Battagram. But following maintenance, people started using it once more.
This happened nearly a year after eight people—six of them children—were rescued in August 2023 from a cable car that was stuck hundreds of feet above the Battagram mountains.
After two of the chairlift’s wires broke, they were trapped inside for several hours. After an almost 14-hour procedure, they were saved late at night.
