Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also announced a contribution of 1 crore rupees to the Edhi foundation last October but Abdul Sattar Edhi denied the charity.
Advertisement
Edhi’s family said he died on Friday at a medical centre in Karachi where he had been having treatment for weeks. He said Edhi was the figure who had unflinching sympathy for humanity.
That tiny dispensary bloomed into a vast network of welfare services across Pakistan known as the Edhi Trust.
The Edhi Foundation also looked after an Indian hearing and speech-impaired girl, Geeta for over a decade, before she was returned to India in October a year ago.
This is why, through a spiritual quest, Edhi and his team established maternity wards, morgues, orphanages, shelters, and homes for the elderly, abandoned children, rehabilitation centers for drug addicts and mentally ill individuals all across the country – only to help those in society who can not help themselves in the port megalopolis of glaring inequalities. In view of his social service to the community, Honourable Mr Edhi is a very simple and humble man dedicating his life to social service.
Military Chief Raheel Sharif and Edhi’s son Faisal saluted the coffin as it was carried by soldiers. “He also wanted to donate his body parts, but only his cornea can be donated as rest of the organs were not in healthy condition”.
Edhi was laid to rest in the clothes he died in, and buried in a grave he himself dug several years earlier at the Edhi village near Karachi.
“Edhi worked for the downtrodden all his life”.
Born in 1928, Edhi initially set up a dispensary in the city of Karachi, where he had arrived as a refugee with family after the partition of India and Pakistan.
Renowned humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi’s Soyam prayers were held on Sunday at Karachi’s Memon Masjid. “His work doesn’t just continue with his foundation, but all the other fantastic organizations that have sprouted in Pakistan after him”, Bassam Tariq said.
Advertisement
Tauseeq said that Edhi Sahab was a lovely person and was full of humility. With his wife, Bilquis, Edhi went on to fill the void in public services for society’s worst off left behind by a state struggling to contend with Karachi’s rapid growth. Before him, the founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah and General Zia-ul-Haq had been given a state funeral.
