SSP who has Baldia fire probe record transferred, Sindh High Court told

The Sindh High Court summoned on Friday a senior police officer, Sajid Sadozai, who was part of the joint investigation team that re-investigated the Baldia factory fire case, and directed him to appear with the complete record of the case.

The directives were issued in the hearing of a bail plea filed by a co-accused Zubair alias Charya. After hearing his counsel’s arguments against Zubair’s implication in the case, the high court called for the complete record of the Baldia factory fire case. However, the investigation officer told the court that the entire record of the probe investigation had been handed over to SSP Investigation Sajid Sadozai. The IO informed the court that SSP Sadozai had been transferred to Qambar Shahdadkot.

Earlier, the applicant’s counsel submitted that Zubair was implicated in the case on the basis of the statement of a key accused, Abdul Rehman alias Bhola, but several politicians and political activists who were named in the same statement and in the joint investigation team’s report had not been included in the case.

He requested the court to grant Zubair bail, contending that no evidence was found against him. The SHC bench directed SSP Sadozai to appear at the next hearing with the complete investigation record.

It is pertinent to mention here that the main accused in the case, Abdul Rehman alias Bhola, a former sector incharge of the Muttahida Quami Movement, had confessed in his confessional statement that the Baldia factory was set on fire on direction of former MQM’s Karachi Tanzeemi Committee (KCT) incharge Hammad Siddiqui for non-payment of Rs250 million as extortion money by the factory owners.

Over 250 workers employed at the garment factory, Ali Enterprises, in Baldia Town were devoured by the merciless fire that erupted in the factory on September 11, 2012.

Amenity plot

The SHC has directed the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation to produce the record of an amenity plot in North Nazimabad on which a residential project has been built for “families displaced from various locations in Karachi”.

The direction came on a petition of filed by former city mayor Naimatullah Khan and others against the unauthorised conversion of over six acres of the Taj Mahal Park in Block I and J of North Nazimabad. The petitioner's counsel, Raja Qasit Nawaz Khan, submitted that the residences had been built on an amenity plot in defiance of the court orders.

The court directed the KMC counsel to file all details of the record, including meeting minutes, resolutions and conversions, to prove that the housing project was build for families displaced from various locations in Karachi.

The court nazir had also submitted in his report that 86 small plots had been bifurcated at the land in question and construction work was being carried out.