KARACHI: While Rangers and police have often claimed to have arrested suspects for their alleged involvement in the Tahir Plaza arson attack, none of them have faced charges eight years after the deadly incident, it emerged on Saturday.

On April 9, 2008, a lawyer and his five clients were burnt alive when a building, Tahir Plaza, near the city courts was set on fire.

It seems that the law enforcement agencies have since been groping in the dark as they have failed to bring to justice the culprits despite passing of eight years.

In Sept 2011, police arrested two suspects — said to be political activists — but they were set free following investigations for lack of evidence.

Syed Nadeem Hasan Zaidi and Wamiq Atiq Siddiqui were booked in the Tahir Plaza arson attack case as the police claimed that the suspects, who had been arrested in some other cases, during interrogation disclosed to their involvement in the arson attack and some other connected cases.

However, they were released under Section 169 (release of accused when evidence deficient) of the criminal procedure code after the police submitted a report in court that two eyewitnesses had failed to identify them during an identification parade conducted by a judicial magistrate.

The third suspect, Abdul Qadir, was arrested in April 2014. However, he was also released in a similar manner after the investigation officer, Syed Zahid Shah, filed an investigation report before an antiterrorism court recommending the release of the suspect under Section 169 of the CrPC.

The report stated that an eyewitness failed to identify the suspect in an identification parade before a magistrate while no other evidence was found during the investigation to connect him with the case and a joint investigation team also cleared him.

It further said that the Karachi Bar Association (KBA) leadership was also asked to come up and extend their assistance in the investigation, but nobody turned up.

KBA president Mahmoodul Hasan told Dawn that he was not aware of any request by the IO seeking the bar’s cooperation. He added that the KBA would extend full support to law enforcement agencies in order to bring the culprits to task.

According to the prosecution, Advocate Altaf Abbasi along with his five clients was burnt to death at his Tahir Plaza office near the city courts when the building, which mostly housed lawyers’ offices, was set ablaze following a spat between two groups of lawyers at the city courts.

Lawyers boycott courts

The legal fraternity on Saturday observed a ‘black day’ and boycotted proceedings at the subordinate judiciary in the city to mark the eighth anniversary of the Tahir Plaza tragedy.

The Sindh Bar Council gave a boycott call and asked the legal fraternity to observe the ‘black day’ to condemn the tragic incidents.

The courts wore a deserted look as hundreds of cases fixed at the city courts and district courts in Malir could not be taken up for hearing as undertrial prisoners were not brought to the courts because of the lawyers’ boycott.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2016