Supreme Court acquits principal convicts in Baldia Factory fire case

The Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted the principal convicts in the 2012 Baldia Town factory fire case, overturning the death sentences previously awarded to Abdul Rehman alias Bhola and Zubair alias Charia.

A three-member bench headed by Justice Shahzad Malik allowed the appeals filed by the two convicts and set aside the judgments of both the anti-terrorism court and the Sindh High Court.

The court held that the accused were entitled to the benefit of the doubt and ordered their acquittal. A detailed judgment will be issued at a later date.

The apex court also disposed of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) petition seeking the removal of certain observations from earlier judgments, noting that those remarks ceased to have legal effect once the convictions were overturned.

During the proceedings, the court dismissed applications seeking to implead relatives of the victims as parties to the case, observing that the inclusion of additional parties would unnecessarily complicate the matter.

According to the court record, Zubair alias Charia had made a confessional statement, whereas no such statement was available on record against Abdul Rehman alias Bhola.

The Baldia Town factory fire, regarded as one of Pakistan’s deadliest industrial disasters, claimed more than 250 lives when a garment factory in Karachi caught fire on September 11, 2012.

Although the incident was initially investigated as an industrial accident, subsequent inquiries alleged that the fire had been deliberately set in connection with an extortion dispute, resulting in terrorism-related charges against several individuals.

The case remained under litigation for several years. In 2020, an anti-terrorism court sentenced Bhola and Charia to death. The convictions were later upheld by the Sindh High Court before being overturned by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.