India mulls murder charges in overpass collapse
KOLKATA: Indian police said yesterday they are investigating possible murder charges against 10 construction company employees who have been either arrested or detained in connection with the collapse of an unfinished overpass in Kolkata that killed at least 26 people.
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.
Three arrested employees of IVRCL Infrastructure, which was contracted to build the overpass, were to appear yesterday in court, where arguments for formal charges were to be heard, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to reporters.
Seven other employees have been detained, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
The employees are 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 yesterday, 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 t he i njured have been discharged from the hospital, 18 were still undergoing treatment, Mr 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 neighbourhood. The structure fell within hours of concrete being poured into a framework of steel girders on Thursday.
“We completed nearly 70% of the construction work without any mishap,” IVRCL official KP Rao said Thursday. He was not among those detained on Friday.
“We have to go into the details to find out whether the collapse was due to any technical or quality issue.”
Two West Bengal state engineers overseeing the construction of the overpass were suspended from work pending an inquiry into the disaster.