Five years have elapsed since the devastating fire razed Tazreen Fashions Ltd in Ashulia on the outskirts of Dhaka in 2012, however there is no visible headway in trial proceedings of a case filed in connection with the incident.
The case is pending with Dhaka First Additional District and Sessions Judges Court because of several factors, such as non-appearance of prosecution witnesses, slow pace of trial, and “negligence” of the prosecution.
The trial started on September 3, 2015 against 13 accused, including Tazreen Fashions Ltd’s owner and managing director Delwar Hossain, and his wife and chairman of the RMG factory, Mahmuda Akhter.
The other accused are Shahiduzzaman Dulal, Mahbubul Morshed, Hamidul Islam, Md Al Amin, Md Al Amin and Anisur Rahman, Abdur Razzak, Md Rana, Shamim Miah, Dulal Uddin and Mobarak Hossain Monju. All of them were the top officials of the factory.
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On one hand, the court is fixing dates - one after the other - for recording witnesses’ accounts while on the other hand, the prosecution lawyers are failing to produce witnesses before the court. As of now, it recorded depositions of only 12 prosecution witnesses.
Speaking to the Dhaka Tribune, Kazi Shahnara Yeasmin, additional public prosecutor of the court, said: “The trial process is not making progress as witnesses are not turning up in the court despite summon orders.
“Many of them [witnesses] are not even present at the addresses given to the investigation officer during probe.”
Sources said most of the witnesses in the case are garment workers who either joined other factories or shifted to new locations after the disaster.
Manipulation of witnesses
There have been allegations that most of the witnesses are poor and the accused are trying to manipulate them with financial benefits or have given them employment offers so that they [witnesses] do not testify against the accused people.
In the same vein, Shahnara said the witnesses might be influenced by the accused as the former are refusing to turn up in the court.
They are not giving the same statements to the court that they had earlier given to police under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, she said adding that it would be difficult to probe the charges brought against the accused if the witnesses were really manipulated.
The country witnessed the devastating fire in the factory on this day in 2012, which left at least 112 workers dead and countess more wounded.
Flawed factory design
According to the charge sheet, Delwar and Mahmuda built the factory building based on a faulty plan, and illegally used its ground floor walkway as a warehouse.
There were no fire exits in the factory, though a provision of the Labour Law stipulates that there must be at least two exits in every factory.
Managers and security guards of the factor were indicted in the case as they had asked the panicked workers to get back to work when smoke was still billowing out from the spot.
Hearing the fire alarms, the workers tried to leave the factory, but the managers and security guards told them that it was nothing serious, the charge sheet added.
