The life threatening task

Speaking to The News, a relative of one of the victims, Haider Amaan, said the deceased were asked to clean the tank of rotten fish before the fresh stock arrived.

He said the victims hailed from Chitral and were not the first ones from the family to be working at fish processing units, others were employed at different fish processing factories too.

“The factory was processing fish feed in powder form,” Amaan said and added that, “Raheem, Khan and Bahadurullah were assigned to remove rotten fish stock before arrival of fresh stock to avoid further financial loss.”

Sharing a standard operating procedure of fish processing, the relative of the deceased said factory owners install pressure pumps for removal of rotten stock, but all pressure pumps at the factory had developed faults.

“My other relatives told me that the three initially tried to remove the stock by using the pumps but the available pumps were out of order,” said Amaan.

Autopsies not conducted

During this probe, it was revealed that the JPMC’s medico-legal officer issued death certificates to victims’ families without conducting a post-mortem examination.

This was disclosed by JPMC’s Additional Police Surgeon Dr Kaleem Shaikh when requested to share findings of the victims’ autopsies.

Replying to a query regarding certificated being issued with the autopsy, Shaikh said that MLOs only perform autopsies in cases where they think they will be questioned by the court. However, SHO Zaman Town police station, Muhammad Ashfaq, alleged that it was the victims’ families who forcibly took the bodies from the hospital and did not allow the MLO to conduct an autopsy.

He further claimed that SI Siraj Ahmed was present at JPMC when the families took the bodies away and even threatened to protest outside provincial police chief’s, AD Khowaja, office with the bodies if compelled to have the post-mortem conducted. 

He added that the heirs got certificates from the MLO and took the bodies to their hometown for burial. Despite 48 hours having passed till the filing of this story, no case regarding the factory incident had been reported.

SHO Ashfaq said the victims’ heirs said they will come back to have a case registered once they have buried the labourers. However, he added that in case the families failed to show up, the police will regardless register a case.    The factory has since been closed down.