ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chief Imran Khan on Saturday reiterated his demand to dismantle the militant wings of political parties amid a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) disclosure that Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) worker had set Baldia facotry on fire for the owners refusal to pay extortion that killed over 260 innocent labourers.
In a message on twitter over the JIT report that blamed MQM for setting the factory on fire Imran said that it was shocking disclosure.
Imran tweeted: “Shocking to see such inhuman callousness by extortionist mafia which set fire to Baldia Town factory killing over 258 workers.”
“Our ruling elite has complete disregard for lives of ordinary citizens. There must be an end to mafia politics & armed wings of pol parties,” he added.
On Friday, Rangers submitted a JIT report that said Muttahida Qaumi Movement was behind the deadly fire that claimed the lives of at least 258 factory workers.
The report prepared by a joint investigation team (JIT) was submitted to the Sindh High Court by an additional attorney general, along with a statement of the deputy assistant judge advocate general of Rangers, Major Ashfaque Ahmed.
The statement 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.
According to the JIT report, 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.
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.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.
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 pressurised 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.
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