KARACHI, Jan 24: The uninterested approach of the police towards crime-scene investigations and an extraordinary lack of enthusiasm for a probe on the part of the Karachi Port Trust seem to have been responsible for the quiet closure of an investigation into the theft of 22 components of the Rs320 million fountain installed amid much fanfare in 2006, it emerged on Saturday.

Dawn has it on good authority that no senior KPT official has been interrogated by the investigators, who have thus far grilled only three low-ranking workers in connection with the probe.

Background interviews with the police officials concerned and a somewhat brief response from the KPT enable one to conclude that there has been little progress in police investigations and a departmental inquiry.

A KPT departmental inquiry was instituted to find people behind the theft of parts of the 500-foot-high “Water Jet Fountain” at Oyster Rock, falling under the KPT’s administrative jurisdiction.

Though the KPT administration announced last week that the multi-million fountain had been made operational again after the previous year’s monsoon when some of its parts had gone missing, it remained tight-lipped about the outcome of the departmental inquiry into the theft of the fountain’s components.

Similarly, the police investigation has remained unfruitful with regard to the daring culprits who sailed more than a nautical mile from the seashore to lay their hands on the fountain components, raising serious questions over the security measures put in the place by the KPT and other agencies concerned.

“We have questioned three KPT employees so far, including a driver and a cleaner,” said a police official. But he could not explain why the investigators have not yet interrogated the senior officials concerned.

“We are moving forward and will soon question more officials and other people concerned. The police are in touch with almost all persons to move investigations forward and are calling them one by one to record their statements,” he said.

The “Water Jet Fountain” project was launched in December 2004 and completed in January 2006 with claims by the federal ministry of ports and shipping that it was the biggest display of its kind and was the world’s largest artificial fountain. It had generated enormous media hype much before it was launched.

However, in less than three years, the Docks police in Keamari Town registered an FIR about the theft of the huge machine, on behalf of an assistant electrical engineer of the Water Jet Fountain in October 2008.

The contents of the FIR (159/2008) lodged under Section 380 of the Pakistan Penal Code suggests that culprits took away some 22 parts of the machine separately and the KPT administration came to know of it only when it found the fountain, installed more than a nautical mile from the shore, out of order several days after the incident.

The KPT administration admits that it would have required the culprits to use boats for such a venture, but it remains unable to explain why it has not yet identified any of the staff responsible for the negligence.

“The KPT has completed its departmental inquiry,” said a KPT official, without disclosing the findings of the inquiry committee. “Now a major task lies with police authorities. In fact they have to make an investigation about the culprits and their modus operandi.”

He refused to comment on the administrative action on the inquiry committee’s report, saying that the police investigation would in fact determine the culprits behind the theft of the fountain’s components. “We are cooperating with the police in accordance with their requirements and we can comment only after the police complete their job,” he added.

However, a senior police official felt certain that his investigators would look at the aspect of an insider’s job in their probe.

“There are several considerations in investigations of such cases,” he said.

“A crime has been committed. Its links must definitely be found within [the organisation], as one cannot rule out an insider’s job in the theft.”