Fatal accident: Factory management, owner still at large

Employee fell into a high-temperature furnace suffering burns

HARIPUR: A factory owner and his staff, charged with involuntary manslaughter, are still at large nearly 10 days after a worker at the factory fell into a furnace and was burnt to death, the police said.

On December 10, 21-year-old Tariq Mehboob of Dingi Village, Haripur was working at the steel plant in the Hattar Industrial Estate when he fell into a high-temperature furnace on December 10. He suffered severe burns on 80 per cent of his body.

The factory lacked any safety or emergency medical equipment including first aid, Tariq’s father Mehboob Alam told the police, adding that the factory administration secretly shifted his son to a Taxila hospital, where he died on December 13.

Alam said he subsequently filed a complaint with the police against factory owner Sheikh Atif Ikram – who is also a former president of the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and the Haripur Chamber of Commerce – along with factory manager Manzoor Hussain Bangash and shift in charge Nazir Khan. The police conducted a preliminary investigation and booked all three suspects on December 20 for manslaughter and conspiring to destroy evidence or give false information.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2016.