Pics of illegal alterations found

In an important development in the investigation of the Dockyard Road BMC building collapse case, the police has seized photographs of the illegal alterations made to the godown from the arrested decorator’s office. The probe has also revealed that civic officials served notices to the decorator to remove the illegal mezzanine floor, but it was never removed, a police source confirmed. The police on October 2 raided the office of accused decorator Ashokumar Mehta at Shri Shivsairaj CHS, JB Road, Bhoiwada Naka and seized various documents and pictures. “We seized documents of Mamamia Developers and Xerox copies of the duplicate BMC licence of Mehta from the office. When officers went through the computer in the office they found pictures of the godown. In the pictures, illegal alterations to the wooden mezzanine made by the accused are clearly seen. The hard disk of the computer was seized during punchnama,” said an officer, requesting anonymity. The probe also revealed that in 2012, (arrested) market inspector Jamaluddin Kazi had inspected the godown in the Babu Genu Market building and found that Mehta had illegally constructed a mezzanine floor. Kazi had also slapped a notice to Mehta to remove the mezzanine, but Mehta didn’t take the notice seriously. Another police officer said, “During our probe, Kazi has been claiming from day one that he never received any notice from superiors about the dilapidated state of the building. He even wrote a letter to the assistant engineer of E ward in 2009 regarding the same. He also claims that he issued notices to Mamamia Developers in connection with the illegal construction of the mezzanine on January 29, 2011 and February 8, 2011 and also slapped a show cause notice on July 26, 2011, but received no response.” The police said that accused civic official Rahul Jadhav claimed to have written a letter on September 26, 2012 to deputy superintendent market department of the BMC and stated that the building should be vacated. But, the deputy superintendent did not come for inspection and nothing was done in he matter. The police found a 265-page file related to the assistant commissioner of market department in Jadhav’s office and is going through it.