KARACHI: The recent ‘reinvestigation’ into the Baldia factory fire incident by a joint investigation team (JIT) is more of a further investigation report and should not be considered conclusive, the counsel for the victims’ families said on Sunday.

Advocate Faisal Siddiqi told a monthly meet-up between the surviving family members of labourers killed in the Sept 11, 2012 fire and the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF) that the only conclusive thing in the report was that the factory owners had been exonerated from all responsibility and portrayed as victims.

The event was held at the Pakistan Medical Association House, where Advocate Siddiqi laid out the reasons for questioning the recent JIT report into the fire at Ali Enterprises.

He said that this was the third report written about the Baldia factory fire and “the three reports make completely different arguments”.

‘Only a copy of the JIT report has been submitted in trial court instead of the required original report’

In the latest JIT report — a task taken up on the orders of the provincial home department in March last year after finding initial investigations ‘flawed’ — the investigating authorities found that the fire at the Ali Enterprises was a planned act of arson.

Advocate Siddiqi’s reservations were based on three points as he argued one by one.

“They [JIT] state in the report to have examined some material from the site of the tragedy which indicated that chemical was used which they believe is the cause of the fire; not a short circuit. One doesn’t know how they came to that conclusion.”

Second, he said the JIT mentioned the statement of an alleged worker of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Rizwan Qureshi, which was based on hearsay, as he was quoted in that JIT report to have heard from someone else about the plot to torch the factory on non-payment of extortion.

Third, in the JIT report, the time duration when the extortion money was demanded by an alleged MQM activist from the owners, amounting up to Rs59.8 million, was after the incident had occurred and not before, which was given as an alibi to torch the factory.

“So far, the only conclusive thing about the report is that it exonerated the owners from all responsibility and negligence. The JIT only submitted a copy of the original report rather than the required original report in the trial court. We’d be able to gauge the report’s value only when the original is submitted in court,” he added.

He also made a point about a general perception regarding the reinvestigation and the curiosity surrounding the case that there was no ‘political slant’ to the matter. “Nowhere it is mentioned in the report that a political party is involved. They named suspects who happen to be affiliated to a political party, that is all,” he explained.

Apprising the family members of the situation, he said the compensation had been paid in full — Rs1.8m per family — under the supervision of the Sindh High Court as well as the pension owed to the family members.

NTUF secretary general Nasir Mansoor said that compensation aside, the authorities needed to take safety measures to ensure better working conditions for thousands of factory workers so that a similar incident could be averted in the future.

“It’d be a far-off and a very strenuous journey to achieve that, but we want to make sure that we don’t forget the 260 workers who died in the incident,” he added.

The Baldia factory fire is one of the worst industrial disasters in the history of Pakistan in which 260 workers, including women died. The latest victim, a woman, died two years after the incident.

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2016