This archive report was first published on 23 May 2020.
On May 22, 2020, a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed into a crowded neighborhood in Karachi, killing 97 people. The bodies were pulled from the ruins of damaged buildings and the smoldering wreckage of the plane, leaving families to depend on DNA reports from a laboratory to identify those they had lost.
Many of the victims were charred beyond recognition, and relatives had spent the night before at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, the city's largest government hospital, waiting for the grim word. To help with the identifications, DNA samples from relatives of 40 victims had been submitted at the forensic lab at the University of Karachi.
Imran Ali's 32-year-old nephew, Armaghan Ali, was one of the people onboard the ill-fated plane. He said,
