Karachi: Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), a splinter group of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), on Saturday disowned a key suspect in the 2012 factory arson case who was arrested by Interpol in Thailand and is to be repatriated to Pakistan.

Anees Kaimkhani, the president of PSP, which he formed alongside Mustafa Kamal, the former MQM senator and Karachi mayor, told the media that Abdul Rahman alias Bhola, the arrested person, had nothing to do with the PSP.

Kaimkhani said any body could be a member of his party after filling the party’s forms, which he said were readily available on the internet.

He was addressing questions surrounding a PSP membership form doing the rounds and showing 46-year-old Bhola was a member.

Bhola was arrested by Interpol in collaboration with the local Thai police at a hotel in Bangkok.

The police seized his belongings for further investigations and to pave the way for his repatriation to Pakistan, where he was named as key suspect involved in setting a garment factory ablaze in Baldia Town, western Karachi, in 2012. The inferno 260 factory workers dead.

Police arrested the owners of the factory as it emerged that there were no emergency exits, thus preventing workers from fleeing the fire.

Nevertheless, the case later took a dramatic turn when a man being questioned on charges of possessing an illegal weapon disclosed to investigators that the factory had been set on fire by an extortionist gang allegedly linked to the MQM.

Rizwan Quraishi, the suspect, told a joint investigation team (JIT) that Hammad Seddiqi, a senior MQM activist, had demanded 20 million rupees (Dh694,000) from the factory owners.

According to police investigators, Quraishi claimed that Seddiqi ordered Bhola to set the factory on fire after the factory’s owners failed to meet his demands.

The court hearing the arson case issued warrants for the arrest of Bhola and other suspects who had fled abroad in a bid to evade arrest.

Commenting on Bhola’s arrest, MQM legislator Rauf Seddiqi said he did not know whether the suspect belonged to his party.

However, he said that whoever had been involved in the case should be punished severely.