SHC seeks report from Keamari DC on action against illegal factories

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday directed the District Keamari deputy commissioner to submit details of the factories in the Mochko area and apprise the court about the action taken against the illegally established factories in Keamari.

The directions came on petitions with regard to the recent 19 mysterious deaths of Mochko residents, most of whom were minor children, allegedly due to toxic gas emissions, as well as similar mysterious deaths in Keamari in 2020.

During the hearing, a division bench of the SHC comprising Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh and Justice Yousuf Ali Sayeed asked the Sindh advocate general what action has been taken against the illegal factories established in Keamari.

The court said that the district’s DC had said in his report that factory owners had closed their factories, without mentioning if these were sealed. The DC said that cases were registered against four factory owners by the police.

The police surgeon said that four postmortem examination reports had been received, while the remaining five reports would be received within 10 days. He said that the presence of toxic and plastic substances was found in the postmortem examination reports.

The court directed the AG to submit comprehensive reports with regard to the death certificates of the deceased, and directed the DC to submit details of the factories in the Mochko area as well as the action being taken against the illegally established factories in the district.

The petitioners, including rights activists, had also approached the SHC for ascertaining the cause of deaths in the Keamari gas leak incident of 2020, in which 19 people had died and hundreds of others had been affected due to a mysterious poisonous gas leak in the port area.

They said that the federal and provincial authorities had failed to protect the lives of citizens, and that no precautionary measures had been taken by the port authorities to prevent the deadly leak.