Karachi factory blast: no investigation breakthrough as yet

KARACHI: The law enforcement agencies have yet to reach a breakthrough in the New Karachi ice storage facility explosion case as investigations experience an impasse despite nine days into the ill-fated incident that claimed 10 lives of laborers, ARY News reported.

Police told ARY News that forensic reports of various evidence collected from the blast site have not yet been produced by the labs while findings on the specimen sent to the University of Karachi lab are still awaited.

The investigation team frequents the blast site taking into consideration all the details related to the blast, police said, adding that at the face of it, no fault with factory machines could be detected so far.

As it is still too early to rule out an intent, police said the Bomb Disposable Squad was also part of the investigations.

It said that factory was divided in three major departments as two-thirds comprised cold storage and the rest had ice factory.

The LEAs are investigating into the possible criminal play in the blast upon the requests by factory owner who claimed he received threats of such a development, police added.

The CM had directed the provincial labor department to furnish a report on the blast which is credited to the ice factory boiler’s blow-up.

READ: Karachi factory blast: CM Sindh questions legitimacy of ice factory

CM Murad Ali Shah inquired whether this ice storage facility legal and were there any inspections of the boilers.

He further asked the labor division whether the employees of that ice facility, six of which plunged to the blast and the following destruction, were registered with Employees’ Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI).