Karachi's Baldia factory was torched over non-payment of Rs200mn as extortion money: JIT

KARACHI - The investigators revealed the Baldia factory had been torched by assailants over non-payment of Rs200 million as extortion money, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) stated in its conclusive report.

The factory inferno incident was ‘a terrorism act’, rejecting it as an accident where more than 250 people had been burnt alive on September 11, 2012, in Karachi, The News reported while quoting a private TV channel report on Sunday.

The report was signed by officers of law enforcement institutions who have contributed to the investigation of the factory fire case.

The findings showed the irresponsible role of the police, which seemed to be hiding the real characters involved in the mass killing of innocent people.

The JIT investigators said in the report that the prime characters in the terrorism incident of Baldia Town factory fire should be brought back from the foreign country besides putting them in the Exit Control List (ECL) and seizure of their passports.

An FIR of the terrorism act was presented in a way that it was simply a murder incident, said the JIT report, adding the police had failed to carry out the investigation in an impartial way after being pressurised.

In its report, the joint investigation team has demanded to register a new FIR and nominating the prime accused, including Rehman Bhola, Hammad Siddiqui, Zubair Charya, and others in the case.

Earlier on Saturday, the Sindh government had announced to make JIT reports public, including the probe findings against Uzair Baloch, Baldia Town factory inferno and Nisar Morai cases on Monday.