KARACHI, Sept 15: The owner of a factory destroyed in a devastating fire, which left over 250 workers dead, in their statement recorded by police on Saturday sought to dispel the impression that the industrial unit had only one exit and rejected reports about its ill-designed architecture.

The statements recorded by the police investigators put a question mark over the response time of the city’s rescue organisations and their capacity to meet such challenges.

Apart from the criminal investigation being carried out by the Site-B police station, the Sindh IG-assigned special investigation team to determine the cause of the deadly fire and elements attached with the incident moved a little forward by recoding the statements of survivors and collecting ‘more pieces of evidence’ from the haunted factory.

Aamir Mansoob Qureshi, lawyer for Shahid Bhaila, one of the three owners of Ali Enterprises, said his client returned after satisfying the police investigators who could summon him again with the other two owners — Abdul Aziz Bhaila and Shahid Bhaila — for further interrogation if needed.

“My client appeared before the police as a suspect and was interrogated by the police,” claimed the lawyer.

“He came up with satisfactory replies of each and every question, which would help in determining the course of investigation.

As we have mentioned earlier, this stance was repeated again today before the police that there were three exit and entrance points in the factory while there was no generator explosion.”

He said the Bhaila family was ‘willing more than anyone else’ to expedite the process of investigation and such thoughts had been conveyed to the police investigators and the authorities concerned.

The counsel said: “My client was there (Baldia Town factory) on the day of fire till 12 midnight and he would soon share through the media the name and position of that [person] who asked him to leave the place.”

He added that the Bhaila family was “not in police custody as such but moved to some undisclosed location for security purpose under police directives”.

“They would be back home soon,” he said.

From the investigation police, a request had also been forwarded to the State Bank of Pakistan for freezing three bank accounts of the owners in an apparent move to put a stop to transactions by the suspects.

Meanwhile, the police investigation team, headed by the DIG CIA, visited the factory again. One of the team members said it had started recording statements of the tragedy survivors, most of them released after treatment in three different hospitals.

“No CCTV [closed-circuit television] cameras were found intact,” said SSP West Amir Farooqi.

“So we don’t have anymore footage recorded at the time of the incident, but we are moving forward and more evidences have been collected. Apart from the statements of the owners recorded by the police, we are recording statements of the wounded fire victims.”