Its owner and manager cable car, A cabin in which eight people were trapped days ago above a deep canyon in Pakistan has been arrested for ignoring safety warnings, local police said today.

Six students remained trapped in the cabin with two adults for more than 12 hours on Tuesday after two of the cables holding the cable car broke in a remote and mountainous area in northwestern Pakistan before they were finally rescued.

“The cables used were of average quality and maintenance should have been done on the mechanism,” explained Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial police official Tahir Ayub Khan.

“The initial warning was given to the owner in June and a second one in August,” he added.

The authorities had asked the owner of the cable car to renew the mechanism, improve the quality of the cables and obtain a safety certificate from the relevant authority, Khan added.

“The manager and the owner were arrested by the police as part of the investigation,” he noted.

The six teenagers were on their way to school when two of the cable car’s three cables snapped, leaving the cabin dangling 300m.

After their rescue some of the passengers on the makeshift cable car said that during their entrapment they lost hope and even considered jumping.

“Some of the children were very upset and thought of jumping, but the elders gave them hope,” said Rizwan Ullah, 15.

The first child managed to be removed from the cabin by helicopter 12 hours after they were trapped, as the sun was setting. The helicopter was then forced by weather conditions and nightfall to return to base.

Members of the Pakistani special forces then used the cable from which the cabin was hanging as an aerial pulley to rescue the remaining trapped people.

In Pakistan, these types of makeshift cable cars are common, running on cables or often just ropes to connect isolated villages in mountainous areas.

The authorities on Wednesday announced the suspension of the operation of all cable cars in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for a week for inspection.

EM