A first information report (FIR) has been registered against 900 workers of Rajco Industries garment factory in Sialkot for murdering their Sri Lankan general manager Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana.
The Sialkot police arrested 235 people, including those who tortured him and recorded videos, dawn.com reports.
The FIR was registered against the 900 workers under the Pakistan Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The applicant admitted that the protesters had slapped, kicked, punched and hit the deceased with sticks in his presence, and dragged him out of the factory on Wazirabad Road where he died.
They then set the body on fire.
The SHO said he was helpless in front of the mob owing to shortage of personnel.
Sialkot police are conducting raids in the city, adjoining villages to arrest the booked 900 suspects.
Police are trying to identify the culprits through CCTV footage from the factory cameras as well as video clips that have gone viral on social media.
The 230 arrested include two main suspects, Mohammad Talha and Farhan Idrees, and all of them have been shifted to an undisclosed location.
Rajco Industries remained closed yesterday, and its workers were on the run to evade arrest.
The Sri Lankan’s post-mortem was completed at Allama Iqbal Teaching Hospital in Sialkot according to which most of his body was burnt and several bones were broken due to the torture he suffered, said hospital sources.
The remains had been transported to a Lahore hospital amid tight security, and after fulfilling formalities, would be sent to Colombo.
Local businessmen also hung pictures of Mr Kumara outside the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry and laid garlands on it.
Quoting unidentified police sources, Geo TV said some factory workers disliked the deceased general manager, a textile engineer, for being strict in enforcing discipline.
After a routine inspection on Friday morning, he had snubbed the sanitary staff over poor work.
The channel further reported that as the factory was about to undergo a whitewash, the manager started removing posters from walls.
As one of the posters was an invitation to a religious moot, some workers objected to it.
The channel’s sources said Diyawadana offered an apology, but a supervisor instigated the workers, who attacked him.
He ran to the roof and tried to hide under solar panels, but the enraged workers got hold of him and killed him there and then.
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