Peshawar police name school owners and builder in FIR as Kundi blames a gutted safety law

Police in Peshawar have registered a criminal case against the owners, shareholders and contractor of the private school whose roof collapsed on Thursday, alleging that it was built with substandard material and that warnings about its crumbling walls were ignored.

The FIR, filed on Friday at Agha Mir Jani Shah police station under Sections 148, 149 and 322 of the Pakistan Penal Code, says students had earlier complained to the school administration about the state of its walls and roofs. The school’s owner was arrested on Thursday. Police said they were trying to arrest the others named in the case.

Officials’ counts of the dead on Friday ranged from 33 to 35, nearly all of them children at the Al-Khair school in Dir Colony. More than 50 people were still being treated.

How the building gave way

According to the FIR, the roof of a second-floor nursery classroom and the roofs of rooms on the ground floor came down. The three-storey building was made of iron girders and unreinforced brickwork without enough structural support. A first-floor classroom’s frame gave way during morning lessons and fell on to a full classroom below.

Rescue 1122 received the first call at 8:48 am on Thursday and its first unit reached the site seven minutes later. More than 100 rescuers worked through the rubble, and 89 people were taken to hospital.

The school stood on 16 marlas of land owned by two men, Waheed and Javed, and was leased in 2024 before construction began.

A preliminary report from the Peshawar deputy commissioner’s office points to structural weakness and recent rain. It says “a comprehensive technical and engineering investigation is required to establish definitive cause and liability.” Forensic teams from the provincial Communications and Works Department have begun collecting masonry and material samples.

Every school to be checked

The provincial Education Department has set up inspection committees in every district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They will examine government schools and privately rented premises alike, from roofs and beams to foundations and staircases, and must recommend emergency repairs, retrofitting or closure within three days.

A separate two-member committee formed by the chief secretary, led by the transport secretary, Zubair Ahmed, with the Communications and Works Department’s chief engineer, Jamshed Ali Khan, has seven days to report on the building’s structure, construction quality and safety arrangements and on any negligence.

Governor Faisal Karim Kundi, who is running the province under governor’s rule, blamed the previous provincial government for stripping provisions from the Private Schools Regulatory Authority law that had allowed officials to seal unsafe schools. He called the change a “criminal act” and warned that municipal and education officials who issued illegal no-objection certificates would be held to account.

“We cannot allow the safety of our children to be compromised,” Kundi said after the collapse. He has announced Rs1 million (Pakistani rupees) for each bereaved family and Rs200,000 for each injured pupil.

A familiar pattern

The Peshawar collapse is the deadliest in a string of such accidents in Pakistan this year. In June, 14 children were killed when the roof of a private tuition centre in Lahore fell in. In July, three girls died when a wall of a government primary school in Sindh collapsed, and a child was killed at an under-construction private school in Lahore. Earlier, four children died in a classroom roof collapse in Dera Ghazi Khan district.