The prosecutor’s office in the Darvoz district of the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) has taken the case of Arabsho Kukaniyev, the driver who was found guilty of accident leaving nine deaths, to the investigative department of the Interior Ministry’s Office for GBAO, according to the press center of the Prosecutor-General’s Office of Tajikistan.

Criminal proceedings against Kukaniyev have reportedly been instituted under the provisions of Article 212 (3) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code – traffic-related offence.

If convicted, Kukaniyev could face up to ten years in prison.   

Recall, nine persons were killed and one other injured on January 29 as a car fell into the river in the Darvoz district.

The accident took place in the evening on the Dushanbe-Khorog highway between the villages of Jarf and Vishkharv.  

The driver, the resident of the Kurgovad village (Darvoz district), apparently lost control of his Opel-Zafira and it fell into the Panj River.  The driver survived the car accident while his passengers – a man, three woman and five children (all of them are residents of Darvoz) – died in the accident.  

The Opel Zafira has six passenger seats but the driver took nine passengers.

The Opel Zafira, also known as the Zafira Tourer since 2011, is a multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) produced by the German manufacturer Opel since the beginning of 1999.  The first and second generation are classified compact MPVs, whereas the third generation, launched in the end of 2011, is classified as a large MPV.

The Opel Zafira has seven seats arranged in three rows, the back row of which can be folded into the floor to create more space, individually or together, rather than requiring that the extra seats be physically removed from the vehicle.  The system was named Flex 7.