Karachi:
An 11-year-old boy will stand trial after being named as an accused in the chargesheet filed by police related to the fire incident that killed 72 people at a shopping complex in Pakistan’s Karachi in January.
The inferno gutted the Gul Plaza shopping plaza on Karachi’s famous M A Jinnah Road in the commercial Saddar area on January 17 and it took a week for firefighters and rescue teams to bring it under control.
The chargesheet filed on Saturday named the boy as an accused along with his father and four others, who are all absconding since the fire broke out.
The minor was managing an artificial flower shop in the shopping complex in his father’s absence and allegedly started the fire while playing with matchsticks, according to prosecution witnesses.
District Prosecutor Abdul Razzaq Gujjar said the boy will be tried in court along with the others named in the chargesheet.
The other accused include Gul Plaza Management Committee members Tanveer Pasta, Amar Ismail, Muhammad Ramazan and Muhammad Ameen.
The investigating officer has listed 42 prosecution witnesses in the chargesheet, according to which 72 people lost their lives, eight were injured and 1,153 shops were gutted in the inferno.
Gujjar said the report of the judicial commission, which also investigated the incident, will be filed at a later stage in court.
According to the chargesheet, several prosecution witnesses have recorded their statements and according to one of them, a 13-year-old boy, deposed that he was present at his friend shop at Gul Plaza and he was playing with matchsticks when the fire suddenly broke out in the shop.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
