‘Bad neighbours’: Orient Labs owners get bail in trespass case

LAHORE: An additional district and sessions judge has granted pre-arrest bail to the chief executive and directors of Orient Laboratories over the alleged illegal construction of a wall on someone else’s property.

Orient Labs Chief Executive Zaheer Iqbal and Directors Zafar Iqbal and Zubair Iqbal, who are brothers, were granted bail at Rs50,000 each. The judge also summoned the complainant in the case, Rana Muhammad Amjad, and the police record for December 16.

The FIR is registered at Sabzazar police station against the three brothers and a man named Shakeel under Sections 448 (trespass), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 511 (attempt to commit an offence) of the Pakistan Penal Code. The complainant said that his house was located next to the Orient Labs factory that collapsed due to a boiler blast in June 2012. The blast had also brought his house down, he said. The accused had started building a wall on his land. When he tried to stop them, he said, they threatened him.

The pharmaceutical company’s owners are also being tried at the LHC over the factory collapse which resulted in the deaths of 26 workers.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2013.