DG ISPR asks not to make hue and cry over JIT report into Baldia factory fire

RAWALPINDI: Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa on Thursday asked all and sundry not to make unnecessary hue and cry over the Joint Investigation Team’s (JIT) report into Baldia factory fire which claimed over 260 lives, saying that members of all important intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ men were part of the JIT.

General Bajwa during an informal chat with media after the detailed press briefing in Rawalpindi said that targeted actions were being taken in Karachi without any discrimination and across the board against all terrorists and criminals elements. He said that the action was not being taken against any specific party.

In indirect reference to MQM criticism of Baldia Town factory fire JIT report, Bajwa warned against making unnecessary hue and cry over the JIT report, saying that it was prepared by people from all important intelligence  and laws enforcement agencies.

He said that the JIT was not being headed by any army man rather DIG South Karachi. He disclosed that the JIT had also been presented earlier in the court and it was presented in SHC for the second time.

He made it clear that a person was arrested only on the basis of his/her crimes not on other consideration.

It is to be mentioned here that the JIT report, which was presented in the Sindh High Court by Rangers, claimed Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) was behind the deadly fire that claimed the lives of at least 260 factory workers.

The report said the information had been disclosed by suspect Mohammad Rizwan Qureshi, an alleged worker of the MQM, on June 22, 2013 during joint investigation of the factory inferno.

The MQM worker revealed that a “well-known party high official” had demanded Rs200 million as Bhatta (extortion money) though his frontman from Ali Enterprises, the owners of the ill-fated factory, in Aug 2012.

The suspect told the investigators that after the extortion demand one of the factory owners had met the sector in-charge of Baldia Town, Asghar Baig, and informed him about it. He said the sector in-charge and his brother, Majid, had taken the factory owner to MQM’s headquarters Nine-Zero and brought the matter to the knowledge of in-charge of KTC (Karachi Tanzeemi Committee) Hammad Siddiqui and Farooq Saleem.

He said Asghar Baig told the KTC men that the factory owners were party supporters and still they were being asked to pay extortion money. The JIT report quoted the suspect as saying that the sector in-charge and his brother had also exchanged harsh words with Hammad Siddiqui and Farooq Saleem.

Later, the MQM worker said, Hammad Siddiqui had suspended the sector in-charge of Baldia Town, replacing him with the joint sector in-charge, Rehman Bhola. The suspect said the KTC men had ordered Bhola to collect Rs200m as protection money from the factory owners. When the factory owners refused to pay the money, Bhola and his accomplices set the factory on fire by throwing chemical substances, according to the suspect.

He said the CID had raided the house of the suspended sector in-charge and arrested his brother Majid who was later released after the MQM pressurized the factory owners to issue a statement that he was not involved in the incident.

According to the suspect, a former MQM minister got a pre-arrest bail of the factory owners cancelled and a frontman of a party high official took Rs150m from the factory owners for disposal of the case.

The suspect claimed that he had obtained all this information from the former sector in-charge of Baldia Town.

Giving a brief history of the suspect, the JIT report said Rizwan Qureshi was born in 1968. He worked as a mechanic in NLC from 1984 to 1988 and as supervisor in a private company till 1991. He had been jobless from 1991 to 1998 and was then appointed in KMC as sanitary sub-inspector.