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KARACHI, Sept 20: The findings of a key police investigator during the course of a probe into the blaze that wrecked a garments factory in Baldia Town last week and killed more than 250 people made the entire episode of the deadliest such incident suspicious on Thursday, raising questions about the exact cause of the fire and the management’s efforts to evacuate people from the two floors of the building before the flames had engulfed the industrial unit.
Terming the testimony as the ‘only truth’ that had come out during the four-day proceedings, tribunal chief retired Justice Zahid Qurban Alvi appreciated the ‘daring efforts’ of Inspector Chaudhary Zafar Iqbal, the investigation officer associated with the SITE-B police station, and told him to keep the probe body abreast of his findings.
Inspector Iqbal briefed the tribunal on the situation inside the factory an hour before and after the fire erupted through findings of statements he recorded during the past one week. People who recorded their statements included the owners of Ali Enterprises and factory workers and families of labourers killed in the fire to people living near the industrial unit.
His statement raised several new questions and put serious doubt over the role of a few staff members as well as people associated with the company one way or another but still the investigator did not say anything that could determine the cause of the fire.
“One of the senior management officers walked down the stairs to the ground floor from the second floor of the building just 15-20 minutes before the fire had engulfed the building,” he said. “It’s is beyond my comprehension as to how it was not possible for any of the more than 250 people to come down to the ground floor the same way? Why were they not informed of the fire and they could not use the same stairs?”
Justice Alvi interrupted him to ask if it was an indication that the doors were locked from outside.
“The statements we have recorded under Section 164 of the criminal procedure code suggest so,” he said. The observation of the investigation officer also echoed in the statement of Ali Enterprises’ accountant Abdul Majeed Khan, who did not rule out the possibility.
“You have been associated with the company for more than 18 years, so have you ever observed that the management locked the doors from outside for any reason?” asked Justice Alvi.
“Yes, I have heard about it. The doors are locked to keep workers from leaving their places before time or to prevent theft of material or equipment,” said Mr Khan.
Earlier, investigation officer Inspector Iqbal named a number of staff members of Ali Enterprises who were detained and questioned by the police that led them to suspect the roles of some persons before and after the fire.
He also named at least two of the persons, who were still missing and being searched for.
At one point he requested the media not to disclose those names to help maintain secrecy and brushed aside reports of extortion threats to the Ali Enterprises saying the owners ‘enjoyed good relations’ with such elements and were ‘well in touch with those groups’.
“The factory outsourced up to Rs25,000 worth waste business daily, which was availed of by some influential people of the area. They were not direct employees of the company, but enjoyed good relations with the owners and moved about in Ali Enterprises freely,” said Inspector Iqbal.“It also surprises me that the fire was first spotted in the cloth rolls dumped in the warehouse on the ground floor, but the statements of witnesses suggest that the people who came to the fire site first made a hue and cry instead of trying to douse it.”
The tribunal asked Inspector Iqbal to bring along the footage of closed-circuit television cameras on Saturday and share more details of his findings with it.
Before the statement of the investigation officer, the tribunal was told that the forensic division of the Sindh police had no expertise in investigating fire incidents, dashing hopes of determining the cause of the fire.
Forensic officers Inspector Muhammad Bashir and Sub-Inspector Qalandar Bakhsh only came up with a list of samples they had collected from the gutted factory and gave them to the investigation officer that infuriated the tribunal.
“We only have expertise of four different forensic examinations that include firearms, handwriting and chassis examination,” said Inspector Bashir. “In such cases we only collect evidence and hand it over to the relevant investigation officer. In this case as well, we collected pieces of wires, glasses and swabs and handed them over to the IO for further examination.”
