FIR of medicines' destruction in fire registered on SHC orders

No specific person nominated in the case

HYDERABAD: Four-and-a-half months after the incident, the Jamshoro police lodged on Sunday an FIR of the destruction of millions of rupees worth of medicines in a fire that erupted at a storage facility at Liaquat University Hospital. The belated registration of a criminal case for the blaze, which, according to the complainant, gutted medicines worth Rs190 million, was carried out on the Sindh High Court's (SHC) order.

The complainant, pharmacy officer Abdul Hafeez Shar, stated in the FIR that on May 7 a blaze destroyed medicines in the bulk store of the hospital. He estimated worth of the burnt medicines at around Rs190 million. However, no specific person was nominated in the case.

The hospital's officials kept rejecting the possibility of arson in the incident believing that the fire broke out due to a short circuit.



However, during hearing of a petition, the SHC on September 7 ordered the Sindh health secretary to lodge an FIR and asked Benazirabad SSP Tanveer Ahmed Tunio to conduct an inquiry and submit its report to the court.

"Every single delinquent, regardless of his status, should receive his due," the court ordered. "Such negligence is not simple [ordinary] because these medicines may have been used to cure or treat poor [people]."

An internal inquiry, ordered by the health secretary in May, had ruled out that the cause of the blaze was accidental.

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