After the Baldia fire

On September 11, 2012, the Ali Enterprises garment factory caught fire and 259 workers died. Discovering the how and the why of their deaths has been a tortuous process, but a clearer picture is beginning to emerge though whether the victims and their relatives will ever get justice is far from clear. A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was constituted and the Punjab forensic team joined the investigation in October 2015. What has emerged is a tangled picture of intimidation, bribery and extortion on the one side, and gross negligence on the other. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a strong political thread emerging, and we may now be clear that the 259 who died did not die by accident. It must be noted that the investigation in the immediate aftermath of the fire concluded that it was an accident. Presumably, the status of that conclusion has now been invalidated — and if not, then it should be.

The forensic team established that the fire had a number of different sources, indicating that it was deliberately set using a chemical accelerant, and the JIT has identified nine key suspects, all belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and is seeking permission to arrest them. The owners of the factory have fled to Dubai and refused to return to Pakistan, but they were interviewed on-camera in the Pakistan Consulate in Dubai. It is clear that a criminal act of monstrous proportions was committed. It is now for the appropriate agencies to prove the case in a court of law, presenting the evidence and allowing judgment to be made. With all the suspects including those named in the JIT report living abroad, an early dispensation of justice seems unlikely. Yet again, the crossover between politics and violent crime is exposed and the losers, again, are the common people who are trying to make an honest living. Perhaps the only saving grace is that the JIT did finally expose something that is close to the truth — but one wonders who it was that allowed the accused to slip the net.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 25^th,  2016.

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