Court informed that work completed to include Anti-Terrorism Act clause in the case. PHOTO: AFP
KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) granted on Thursday two more weeks to the police to submit a supplementary charge sheet in the Baldia factory fire case.
Two-hundred-and-sixty people were killed in fire at Ali Enterprises garment factory in Baldia Town on September 11, 2012. Portrayed as an accident for three years, the case has now been declared an act of arson by extortionists.
The ATC-II also extended the interim pre-arrest bail of Muttahida Qaumi Movement lawmaker Rauf Siddiqui, Hyderabad-based businessmen brothers Umar Hasan Qadri and Ali Hasan Qadri and others implicated in the case.
At the outset of the hearing, investigations head SP Akhtar Farooq submitted an application before the judge seeking more time to finalise the supplementary charge sheet in the case against the recently arrested suspect Abdul Rehman alias Bhola.
Rehman, a former MQM sector incharge in Baldia Town, has been accused of setting the factory on fire through his men on the instructions of the party's then Karachi Tanzimi Committee chief Hammad Siddiqui over non-payment of extortion by the factory owners. He was arrested in Bangkok and extradited to the country through the Federal Investigation Agency.
SP Farooq added that the police have approached the interior ministry to have red warrants issued for absconding suspect Hammad. He is believed to have left the country in December, 2013.
The court adjourned the hearing till January 25, asking the police to submit the charge sheet so that the case can proceed.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 13th, 2017.
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