Peshawar School Toll Rises to 35, Principal Detained as Probe Finds School Was Registered Without Any Building Inspection

The death toll from Thursday’s school roof collapse in Peshawar’s Dir Colony has risen to 35. Thirty-three bodies were brought to Lady Reading Hospital and two more to Naseerullah Babar Hospital. Most of the injured children taken to LRH have been discharged after treatment, though three with serious head injuries remain under care. All the bodies have been handed over to families after legal formalities were completed.

Principal detained after the owner’s arrest

Police, who had already arrested the school’s owner, have now also taken the principal into custody. Capital City Police Officer Dr Mian Saeed Ahmed says the building’s structure was weak and its roof had been loaded with construction it could not bear — the combination that brought two storeys down on the classrooms below. Deputy Commissioner Afaq Wazir says rescue teams have cleared all the debris and no injured child remains at the scene.

Registered in March — without a single technical inspection

The most troubling detail has come from the regulator itself. The school was registered with the Private Schools Regulatory Authority in March 2026, yet its building never went through a technical inspection. PSRA Managing Director Javed Iqbal has acknowledged that the authority simply has no team to inspect buildings, and that registration was granted once classroom and administrative requirements were met. The authority, he says, can fine a dilapidated building but has no power to shut a school down. For parents across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, that admission raises an obvious question: how many other schools are running in buildings nobody has ever checked?