ISLAMABAD, Oct 6: Affected residents of the Margalla Towers apartments that had collapsed in the October 2005 earthquake fear that the owner of the ill-fated building now on bail may flee prosecution again if the authorities do not take measures to keep him in the country to answer to law.

Of the five blocks of the 11-storey building constructed in 1992-96 at F-10, one-and-a-half blocks having 38 apartments had come down in the earthquake, killing 73 people and injuring 85 others.

As a case was registered against the owner on the charge of faulty construction, he along with his wife and son escaped from the United Kingdom. A few days later the architect engineer of the residential complex, Hafeez Sheikh, also fled.

The government sought assistance of Interpol to arrest the accused but Mr Khokhar himself decided to return to the country last year after the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered that all the owners of the apartments would get compensation except Mr Khokhar unless he returns and surrenders. He remained in jail for almost a year till a couple of months back when he was released on bail.The Margalla Tower Residents’ Society (MTRS), which met on Monday in connection with the third anniversary of the tragedy, feared that Mr Khokhar could flee again as his name had not been put on the Exit Control List (ECL).

The meeting was of the view that the government should keep a vigil on Mr Khokhar even if his name was put on the ECL because in the past some wanted people had managed to escape despite their names being in the ECL. The recent escape of former Bank of Punjab President Hamesh Khan, who was facing a corruption case, is one such example.

Member MTRS Iftikhar Chaudhry told Dawn that the possibility of Mr Khokhar’s escape had increased after the Supreme Court ordered the authority concerned to pay him the compensation amount against his five apartments that caved in along with 142 others in the earthquake.

Under the directives of the apex court in 2005, when Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was the chief justice, the owner of the building and the Capital Development Authority (CDA) were held responsible for ignoring the faulty construction of the Towers and directed to pay compensation to the owners of both collapsed and other apartments.

The participants of the meeting expressed concern over government’s failure to make public the report of the Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission, which was prepared by then Relief Commissioner Lt-Gen (retired) Farooq Ahmed, who now heads the National Disaster Management Authority.

Earlier, General Farooq had maintained at a PAC meeting headed by former MNA Riaz Fatyana that some “influential persons” were forcing him to change the facts of the report.

The meeting observed that both the governments of former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and President Asif Ali Zardari were concealing the facts of the report. “In fact, the 1,600-page report reportedly held responsible various bureaucrats, mostly from the CDA who served the civic body between 1992- 2005,” Mr Iftikhar said.

The participants said these bureaucrats had put immense pressure on the police inquiry in the criminal case against Mr Khokhar and his accomplices. They suspected that Mr Khokhar was planning to flee the country after getting the amount of the five apartments on the directive of the Supreme Court.

Earlier in October 2007, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry stopped the payment of compensation amount to the owner, which was later allowed by incumbent Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar. Following this, the affected persons filed a review petition against the decision of the apex court on September 27, 2008.

They appealed to President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to make the Margalla Towers investigation report public.

Gen Farooq told a TV channel recently that the report had been prepared in three months after the tragedy and had been presented to the then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.