Orient labs: Factory owners sent on four-day physical remand

Investigation officer tells court police yet to recover record of those who died in the incident.

LAHORE: A judicial magistrate has awarded four days of physical remand to owners of Orient Laboratories, who are accused of the deaths of as many as 26 people who died when the company’s factory collapsed due to the owners’ negligence.

On Friday, Sabzazar police produced the three men before Magistrate Rana Rashid Ali Khan, seeking a ten-day remand on the plea that police have to verify the factory’s license. The investigation officer implored to the court that police have to recover the record of those who had died in the building collapse.

The accused’s counsel prayed that the court send his clients on judicial remand, contending that police have nothing to recover.

After hearing the arguments, the judge awarded a four-day physical remand of the accused persons.

The FIR, which was registered by Sabzazar police inspection Muhammad Ashraf Sindhu, states that Sindhu and other police officials were on a routine patrol when they received an emergency call through 15 that a blast had occurred in the factory. The policemen reached the spot and saw that entire building, along with adjacent buildings of Khalid Habib and Rana Amjad, had collapsed and factory workers were struggling under the debris.

The FIR states that Habib and Amjad told police that they had submitted several applications in different departments to move the factory out of the residential area but no one had listened to them. The factory was sealed but later reopened, they said. Later, they claimed, they had cautioned the three brothers of heavy losses but they ignored the warning.