3 arrested over deadly flyover collapse
Villagers block women activists from Hindu temple
KOLKATA, April 2, (Agencies): Indian police have arrested three employees of the construction firm building a flyover which collapsed in the eastern city of Kolkata, as the death toll rose to 26, a senior officer said Saturday.
The arrests were made late Friday after police sealed the Kolkata office of IVRCL, the contractor behind the ill-fated construction project in West Bengal state.
Five other staff were detained for questioning over the tragedy that unfolded after a 100-metre section of the flyover crashed down Thursday, crushing pedestrians and vehicles on the street below.
“Three mid-level officials of the Hyderabad-based construction firm were arrested last night,” Kolkata police joint commissioner Debasish Boral told AFP. “We have also detained five others of the firm, sealed its office in Kolkata and sent a notice to its managing director to join the investigation into the incident,” he said.
The three arrested employees are expected to appear in court Saturday, where a public prosecutor will outline the initial charges against them.
Although officials have ruled out the chance of finding any more survivors under the rubble, a rescue operation continued Saturday at the site where blocks of concrete and twisted girders lay strewn.
The death toll rose to 26 after rescuers found the body of a truck driver’s assistant lying crushed under the rubble, Boral said.
The West Bengal government has ordered an investigation into the state agency responsible for infrastructure and construction, over how the project came to be approved.
Police have registered a case of culpable homicide against the firm while Derek O’Brien, a state lawmaker, has said the company had been blacklisted in other states and had a “bad reputation”.
Construction of the two-kilometrelong flyover began in 2009 and was supposed to be completed within 18 months, but suffered a series of holdups. IVRCL has denied responsibility for the disaster in the capital of West Bengal state. A company representative infuriated victims on Thursday when he described the disaster as an “act of God”.
Struggled
Authorities initially struggled to get cranes and other large machinery through the narrow streets of Burrabazar, one of the oldest and most congested parts of the city where the flyover collapsed.
On Saturday, Rahul Gandhi, the vicepresident of the opposition Congress party, visited the accident site and met with injured victims recuperating at a city hospital.
The disaster is the latest in a string of deadly construction accidents in India, where enforcement of safety rules is weak and substandard materials are often used.
The disaster comes at a sensitive time for West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose centre-left Trinamool Congress party is seeking re-election.
Banerjee has blamed the previous state government under which the flyo- ver project was started, but has herself faced criticism over the beleaguered construction project.
Voting in the West Bengal elections begins on Monday and will be held in five phases lasting a month.
Rescuers continued clearing rubble from the scene of Thursday’s accident. Sixty-nine people have been pulled out alive, but authorities said they doubted more survivors would be found.
Judge Sanchita Sarkar of the Kolkata city court on Saturday remanded three arrested employees of IVRCL Infrastructure Co, which was contracted to build the overpass, to police custody for nine days for questioning and investigation. Seven other company employees have been detained for questioning, police said.
The employees were being questioned regarding possible charges of murder and culpable homicide, which are punishable by death or life imprisonment, and criminal breach of trust, which carries a prison sentence of up to seven years, police said.
Rescue workers pulled out two more bodies from under the rubble on Saturday, raising the death toll to 26, said police inspector Debashish Chakraborty. The bodies were pinned under concrete slabs and were recovered by emergency workers at the crash site.
Police believe there may be more bodies under the debris.
While most of the injured have been discharged from the hospital, 18 were still undergoing treatment, Chakraborty said.
IVRCL Infrastructure, based in the southern city of Hyderabad, was contracted in 2007 to build the overpass, a project that was expected to take two years. But construction was far behind schedule.
The overpass had spanned nearly the width of the street and was designed to ease traffic through Kolkata’s densely crowded Bara Bazaar neighborhood. The structure fell within hours of concrete being poured into a framework of steel girders on Thursday.
“We completed nearly 70 percent of the construction work without any mishap,” IVRCL official K.P. Rao said Thursday. “We have to go into the details to find out whether the collapse was due to any technical or quality issue.” Rao was not among those detained on Friday.
MUMBAI:
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Angry villagers blocked a group of women activists from entering the inner sanctum of a temple in western India Saturday, despite a court order mandating Hindu women’s right to worship.
The high court in Mumbai said Friday women had a fundamental right to enter temples and directed authorities not to bar them from any Hindu place of worship across the state of Maharashtra.
Buoyed by the high court order, a group of about 30 women activists tried to enter the shrine of Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district on Saturday, television footage showed.
But hundreds of villagers — both male and female — who believe in the centuries-old tradition of barring women from entering the shrine formed a human wall, forcing the female protesters to retreat.