LAHORE:
An additional district and sessions judge on Wednesday cancelled interim pre-arrest bails granted earlier to three owners of the Orient Labs after they failed to satisfy the court that the building had not collapsed due to their negligence. Lahore High Court then granted interim bail to the men till February 29 when it will hear the case on merit.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Chaudhry Nazir Ahmed who had been hearing the case first reserved the ruling following detailed arguments by both sides and later dismissed the bail petitions of Zaheer Iqbal, Zafar Iqbal and Zubair Iqbal.
Advocate Sardar Khurram Latif Khosa said the claim in the FIR that factory had been sealed was false. Also, he said, that Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code (murder) did not apply to the case. He said, “When people die in fires or workers die in coal mines, murder cases cannot be registered against owners.”
He said his clients had left the building just 10 minutes before the incident. “Had they been 10 minutes late, they too would have ended up under the rubble,” he said.
The opponent’s counsel Chaudhry Khalid Rasheed, representing the complainants in the case, said that the owners had been aware of the condition of the building, but had ignored it.
He read the statement of a technician, who had worked for the Orient Lab, made to the police. It said that heavy machinery had been installed in the building and a heavy gas-fired power generator placed on the third floor.
The technician had said that the building “literally trembled” whenever the generator was on.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 23rd, 2012.
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