A Bangladeshi court on Monday gave police 15 days to interrogate the owner of a building that collapsed last week, killing at least 382 people.
Mohammed Sohel Rana, who was arrested on Sunday, will be held for questioning on charges of negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work.
His father, Abdul Khaleque, was also arrested on suspicion of aiding Rana to force people to work in a dangerous building.
Rana was brought to the Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court in a bullet-proof vest, apparently for fear of what the angered factory workers could do to him, and led him away to an unknown detention place after the magistrate granted a police request to hold him longer before filing formal charges.
The crimes he is accused of carry a maximum punishment of seven years, although more charges could be added later.
Meanwhile, rescue workers in Bangladesh on Monday became doubtful more survivors will be found, after a fire delayed their efforts to dig into the rubble of a building that collapsed five days ago.
Officials leading the operation said on Monday it was unlikely more lives would be saved after they failed to rescue a young woman named Shahanaz, whom they believe was the last remaining survivor.
“We found a woman alive,” Mustafa Kamal, according to a volunteer rescue operator. “When we went to rescue her, an outsider joined the operation with a metal grinder, and from there it sparked, it led to a fire, and she died”.
The firefighters managed to put out the fire, but the smoke spread to several floors leading them to believe that there are no more survivors. The blaze also injured at least six rescuers.
“There is little hope of finding anyone alive. Our men went inside and saw some dead bodies in the ground floor. But no one was seen alive,” said Brigadier General Ali Ahmed Khan, the chief of the fire brigade at the scene.
Rescuers on Monday therefore used heavy machinery to cut through the destroyed structure after hopes of finding any more survivors began to fade.
Major-General Hasan Suhrawardy, chief of the rescue operation, said the crew was using cranes and other heavy equipment “very carefully with a priority to save the survivors, if any”.
Nearly 400 people were killed and hundreds remain missing after the illegally-constructed, eight-storey Rana Plaza collapsed on Wednesday morning, with thousands of workers inside the five garment factories in the building.
About 2,500 survivors have been accounted for.
