Even as the blame-game continued over the collapse of the Vivekananda Flyover in the busy Burrabazar-Posta area of Kolkata north-west, three more bodies were pulled out from the debris on Friday, taking the death toll to 24.
Till late Friday evening one person was trapped inside a truck on which the bridge had collapsed. Around
90 people were being treated at various hospitals, Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajib Kumar said.
The police arrested three top officials of the Hyderabad-based construction company, ICVRl Infra and slapped murder charges on them.
Earlier the police had detained 10 officials of IVRCl’s Kolkata office for interrogation even as its Kasba office in South Kolkata remained locked for the second day on Friday.
The police said cases of murder, attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy had been slapped against the erring company. The police had on Thursday filed a suo motu case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Meanwhile, statements emanating from different quarters questioned the role of the Urban Development Department. locals claimed that the accident could have been avoided had the Government been a little more sensitive towards the people’s concern.
Trinamool MP Sudip Bandopadhyay said that he had alerted the Mamata Banerjee Government about the faulty design of the bridge. “As a people’s representative, I had alerted the Government about the faulty design. But by that time about 50-60 per cent of the work had been completed” he said.
The Opposition parties immediately raised the issue wondering why the Government did not stop work and got the plan changed. “From Sudip Bandopadhyay’s statement it appears that the Government was aware that a disaster might happen. The question is why they did not take action then,” said PCC president Adhir Chowdhury.
like the BJP did on Thursday, the Congress too demanded CBI enquiry into the accident. “We are filing a PIl demanding a CBI probe” Chowdhury said.
Meanwhile, in a sensational revelation local people claimed that the parts of the construction work had been sub-contracted to a construction syndicates run by local Trinamool leaders.
One such company S Enterprises was allegedly doing the casting work at the site, Kamlesh, a local said, adding, the company belonged to the nephew of local Trinamool MlA. Another company called R Constructions allegedly held under a benami deal by the same MlA’s relatives was also involved in some kind of activities in the construction of the flyover, sources said.
“It should be investigated as to whether the main company from Hyderabad had to cough up huge amount to these companies and compromised in the quality of work to make up for the losses,” they added.
The workers involved in the work also said that they had been employed by Rafiqul, a Trinamool strongman from Rajarhaat-Salt lake area.
BJP leaders like Babul Supriyo and Siddharthnath Singh also pointed fingers at the connivance between the local Trinamool MlA and the construction company and demanded a probe. “The reports of some kind of link between the construction company and the local Trinamool MlA is coming this should be probed,” he said.
However, Firhad Hakim, Urban Development Minister, on Friday attacked Singh for “playing politics when so many people have died.”
Notwithstanding Hakim’s appeal to depoliticise the rescue operations, his own party leaders prevented CPI(M) supporters from donating blood at the Government-run Central Blood Bank at Maniktulla.
This, at a time when there was a huge shortage of blood being reported from the hospitals. Sources said about 100 SFI members had donated blood but after that Trinamool MlA Dr Nirmal Maji got the blood donation camp removed.
“He said that we will not take CPI(M)’s blood,” Blood Bank sources said. He, however, rejected the claim saying he had not given such orders adding as well that there was no need of blood.
Meanwhile, the layout of the area and the ‘pattern’ of the collapse made the rescue work all the more difficult even as an NDRF engineer pointed out how the partially smashed truck is literally holding the huge girder on which one lane of the collapsed flyover is resting with its entire weight.
If the heavy-duty cranes are used to pull out the truck to release the trapped person, “there is a possibility of the whole weight subsiding on the vehicle causing even the tyres and the fuel tank to explode causing bigger disaster,” said the NDRF engineer.
So, concrete cubes had been piled up underneath the precariously inclined girder. One side of the beam was touching the road at the Rabindra Sarani crossing in the east and the other side hanging from the pier number 39 to the western side. To escape fire sand bags had been piled up around the truck and the entire locality had been cleared, the police sources said.
“We have to pull the truck out and salvage the dead person because finally the body may start decomposing,” an NDRF official said.
During the day forensic experts visited the area and collected materials which would throw light on two things in the least, experts said. First, the test will ascertain whether there was sabotage, and secondly, it will find out whether the material being used was up to the mark,” said Partho Roy, a Jadavpur University professor and a structural engineer.