KARACHI, Jan 10: The Sindh Ombudsman’s team has directed the CIA police to present all the Pearl Continental Hotel employees that it took into custody before the Mohatasab on Friday morning.

The mother of Mohammad Nasir, one of the detainees and president of the hotel’s CBA union, had submitted an application with the Ombudsman on Thursday that her son and many other workers including the union officials were being kept in the CIA Centre illegally.

A team of the Ombudsman’s office members, led by Shahnaz Hamid, raided the CIA Centre and found many workers including Mohammad Nasir (president), Aurangzeb (vice chairman), Mohammad Ishaq (vice-president), Ghulam Mahboob (general secretary), Bashir Hussain (joint secretary), Mohammad Nawaz (social secretary) and others in detention there.

The team asked for the FIR, which was shown to them. The FIR had been registered with the area police in connection with a fire that broke out in the hotel’s laundry a few days back. No body was mentioned in the FIR and it was against unknown persons.

The team asked the CIA people why those people had been kept in custody without following the prescribed procedure, to which they had no answer. The CIA was directed to produce all those taken into custody.

SSP CIA, Manzoor A. Mughal, told Dawn that the employees kept at the CIA Centre would be presented before the Ombudsman on Friday.

He said that the CIA was investigating the fire incident at the hotel and was calling a few employees everyday for questioning. He added that the employees were allowed to who after being questioned.