Sara, 3, electrocuted at Pakistan's PC Hotel

Lahore - A three-year-old girl who went to a top-rated hotel in Lahore with her dad was taken to a hospital after receiving a deadly electric shock on the hotel's floor.

When Sara went with her father to the most famous hotel in the country, the Pearl Continental (PC) Hotel, no one knew that she was moving toward her own death. After entering the hotel, she was not the jolly, playful child anymore but stranded between life and death. She was electrocuted on the floor of the hotel while she played there with a few other kids and now is lying on deathbed in a hospital awaiting God’s mercy to return her to life. It is Meher Bokhari of SAMAA TV again, the one journalist in Pakistan who raises issues that no other dares to raise, who in her popular show News Beat, dated June 08, 2010, shook up the entire nation once again by covering the story of Sara, telling how the poor child went with her father to the PC hotel in Lahore on 29th May, 2010. As her father sat at a table, Sara and a couple of other kids were attracted to the aquarium in the hotel’s hall. Fascinated by the colorful fish swimming in the aquarium, Sara and the kids imitated the act of swimming on the hotel’s floor, entirely unaware of death lurking next to her. There, rolling and playing fish on the floor, Sara received a life-threatening electric shock from a decorative light. Her father’s glance caught sight of the child lying motionless on the floor. He rushed to his baby and found her lifeless, her pulse and heartbeat miles away. And when he asked for help, to his shocking disappointment, this topmost hotel of the country had no arrangement for an ambulance or any first-aid specialist, not even an ordinary doctor or any kind of emergency service that would get the poor child some quick medical help. The unfortunate father had to pick his dying daughter up in his own arms and rush to the nearest hospital to save her life. Later, he would take her to a major hospital with the help of an ambulance that arrived after much effort. Now, poor Sara is struggling for her life in coma for over 10 days while her parents are praying for her day and night. Meher Bokhari almost cried for the suffering of the child, and the nation cried with her. People called on phone to express their sympathies with the parents and prayed for Sara. But what about the hotel and the authorities? Well, it turns out that the hotel has altogether denied the girl receiving an electric shock. While the doctor’s reports clearly mark electrocution as the cause of the injury, the hotel management states that it may be due to something the girl swallowed accidentally. Sara’s uncle tried to file a report of criminal negligence against the hotel (it was over 200 volts of electric potential flowing through that lighting item, instead of harmless 10 or 12 volts, on the floor) but the police refused to file an FIR. The media have largely been silent about the incident. Meher Bokhari and SAMAA TV brought this issue up and broke the silence over the tragedy. It is worth mentioning that during the show, a man with job experience in hotel management called and told Meher that these fancy hotels have no arrangements of any kind for dealing with an emergency and their staff is instructed to deny any responsibility on the management’s behalf in such cases.