Karachi police register cases against power company, fire department as mall fire kills 11

KARACHI: Karachi police have registered a ‘criminal negligence’ case against the city’s main power supply company, K-Electric, and the fire department, after a blaze tore through a shopping mall in the southern Pakistani metropolis on Saturday, killing 11 people.

Such incidents are common in Karachi, the sprawling capital of the southern Sindh province and a city of nearly 15 million people. 

Earlier this year in April, a fire tore through a garment factory killing four firefighters. The flames ripped through the building, eventually causing it to collapse. In August 2021, at least 10 people were killed in a fire at a chemical factory in the same city. In the deadliest such incident, 260 people were killed after being trapped inside a garment factory when a fire broke out in 2012.

In the latest incident, a fire broke out at the multi-story RJ Mall, a commercial high-rise that also houses call centers and software firms.

The police report in the case said substandard materials were used to construct the mall, with builders getting approvals from both K-Electric and the Fire Department despite glaring safety violations.

“The connivance with E-Electric and other organizations, construction of the building against the law and use of substandard material and act of negligence resulted in the loss of precious life and wounding several others” the police report, released to the media on Sunday, said.

“There were no safety equipment and the emergency exit,” the complainant, police officer Sadaruddin Mirani, noted in the report, invoking multiple sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, including 322 (manslaughter) and 436 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy property).

Speaking to reporters outside the mall on Sunday, Zafar Mahesar, the police chief of District East, said an inquiry committee had been formed to investigate the incident.

“The FIR is the first report. We will scrutinize which organizations approved the building and will take action against them. Our aim is to hold individuals accountable for their involvement,” he said.

Caretaker Sindh Chief Minister Maqbool Baqar has ordered a safety audit of commercial buildings, public spaces, and offices in an attempt to address increasing incidents of fires attributed to lapses in the city’s lax inspection system, his office said.

Karachi, Pakistan’s main commercial hub, is home to hundreds of thousands of industrial units and some of the tallest buildings in the South Asian country.

But despite its size, the city has only 22 fire stations, a little over a dozen functional fire tenders, few snorkels, and slightly more than a thousand firefighters, woefully inadequate for a megapolis that sees hundreds of fire incidents annually.