Mohammad Ponir Hossain/REUTERS
- A factory fire in Bangladesh on Thursday claimed the lives of 52 workers, including as many as 16 children.
- The owner of the factory and his four sons have been arrested following the deadly blaze.
- "It was a deliberate murder," district police chief Jayedul Alam told Agence France-Presse.
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The owner of a juice factory in Bangladesh has been arrested and charged with murder after a fire broke out in the factory, killing 52 workers including several children, said police, according to local paper The Dhaka Tribune.
Md Abul Hashem, the CEO of the company that owns the factory, and his four sons were among the eight people detained by police on Saturday, per The Tribune.
The factory fire happened on Thursday in the town of Rupanj, just outside Bangladesh's capital of Dhaka.
Workers were trapped inside the burning factory because the entrance was padlocked, police told Agence-France Presse. The factory was storing highly flammable plastics and chemicals.
"It was a deliberate murder," district police chief Jayedul Alam told AFP.
The website of Sajeeb Group, the parent company that owns the factory, shows an apology note stating that the company seeks forgiveness for the fire and "is on the side" of the families of the deceased. Insider was not immediately able to reach Sajeeb Group for comment for this story.
Children as young as 11 are among the missing and dead, and State Minister for Labor Monnujan Sufian said a separate investigation has been launched against the possible use of child labor in the factory, reported AFP.
UNICEF wrote in a statement on Sunday that as many as 16 children have died in the fire.
"This tragic incident brings to light yet again that despite laws that should protect them, many children in Bangladesh are not only working, but they are working in hazardous conditions," UNICEF wrote in the statement.
A lack of fire safety and labor inspections by authorities is a common scenario in Bangladesh, said Sharmin Akter, a lawyer who works with high court matters for the non-profit organization Bangladesh Legal Aid and Service Trust.
Akter told Insider said that Thursday's incident was a "complete violation" of workers' rights to life and safe workplaces.
"It's high time that we ensure proper inspections are carried out. If the fire safety inspectors had found these issues and confronted the factory owners before, or if the labor inspectors found that they had been hiring children, this would most probably have been prevented," said Akter.
Child labor is illegal in Bangladesh, which defines the age of child laborers as anyone below the age of 14.
But as of 2019, there were 1.3 million child laborers in Bangladesh between the ages of five and 14, accounting for 4.3% of the country's total workforce, according to the US Bureau of International Labor Affairs.
Akter said that young children often get hired in Bangladesh using fake papers that claim they are 14 or older.
"Child labor has become quite common here," she said, adding that the onus is on companies and the authorities to prevent such lapses.
Bangladesh also has a history of deadly industrial disasters and fires. In 2012, a textile factory fire in Dhaka left 117 dead, and it was later discovered that the exits had been illegally locked. The next year, a building that housed five garment factories in Dhaka collapsed, killing 1,132 people and injuring more than 2,500.
Akter said that although negligent company or factory owners are often arrested following industrial disasters like Thursday's, the court takes years to resolve their cases and the suspects are often released on bail. She pointed to the 2012 factory fire as an example: Some arrests were made, she said, but the case is still being heard and no final sentence has been issued.