RAHIM YAR KHAN: At least seven people were killed and more than 60 injured when a tractor-trolley carrying a wedding party collided with a trailer in Rahim Yar Khan district of southern Punjab, in one of the deadliest road accidents recorded in the district this year.
The collision took place near Sardar Garh on Saturday night, police said, attributing the crash to the trailer driver’s negligence and reckless driving. The trailer was travelling in the opposite direction when it rammed into the tractor-trolley carrying the wedding party, in what was described as a head-on collision.
A spokesperson for Sheikh Zayed Hospital said four people were pronounced dead on arrival, while three others later succumbed to their injuries during treatment, taking the death toll to seven.
Rescue 1122 teams shifted the injured to hospital for medical attention, a district official said. An initial report suggested the accident was the outcome of reckless driving, and police are investigating further to ascertain the cause.
The deputy commissioner directed authorities to ensure the injured receive the best possible medical care.
Chief Minister Punjab Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Sunday expressed grief over the loss of precious human lives in the traffic accident near Rahim Yar Khan. The chief minister extended her condolences and sympathies to the bereaved families and prayed for the departed souls.
The casualty figure — more than 60 injured from a single trolley — points to the central safety question raised by the crash. A tractor-trolley is an agricultural haulage unit designed to carry grain, fodder, sand or brick. It has no seating, no restraints, no crash structure and, in most cases, no rear lighting or reflective marking. Trolleys are frequently unregistered, and the tractors pulling them are not licensed for passenger transport.
Despite that, the tractor-trolley remains the default means of moving a large baraat between villages across rural south Punjab, where organised passenger transport is thin, hiring rates for coaches are beyond many families, and a single trolley can carry the entire wedding party in one trip. Passengers stand or sit on open boards with high side panels. In a frontal impact, there is nothing to arrest their movement, which is why a collision that a bus might absorb produces mass casualties here.
The hazard is compounded after dark. An unlit trolley on a highway shared with long-haul freight is close to invisible to an approaching driver until the last moment.
Rahim Yar Khan sits at the junction of the N-5 National Highway and the M-5 motorway, placing local farm and village traffic in constant contact with heavy inter-provincial goods vehicles running between upper Punjab and the Sindh ports.
That mix has produced a grim record. In February 2023, twelve people were killed on the M-5 near Rukanpur in the same district when a van overturned after a tyre burst and a bus and a jeep collided with it from behind, with the dead and injured taken to the same Sheikh Zayed Hospital. In February 2025, six passengers died and five were injured when a speeding coach struck a loader rickshaw on the N-5 near Zahirpir in dense fog.
Weddings in particular have been struck before in this district. In July 2022, a boat carrying a baraat sank in the Indus near Machka in Sadiqabad tehsil of Rahim Yar Khan, killing 50 people, including women and children, with 24 more unaccounted for.
Sheikh Zayed Hospital, attached to Sheikh Zayed Medical College, is the district’s principal tertiary care facility and the designated receiving hospital for major trauma across Rahim Yar Khan. An intake of more than 60 casualties in a single event places acute pressure on emergency capacity, blood supply and orthopaedic and surgical theatre availability.
Cases arising from fatal collisions of this kind are ordinarily registered under Section 320 of the Pakistan Penal Code, covering qatl-i-khata by rash or negligent driving. Because such offences fall within the Qisas and Diyat framework, the legal heirs of the deceased may compound the matter, and a substantial proportion of fatal road crash cases in Pakistan conclude by compromise rather than conviction.
Police investigation into the collision continues. The Lahore Times will report the registration of a case and the identities of the deceased once they are officially released.
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