The Kolkata police on Saturday arrested another IVRCL official and questioned three Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) engineers in the collapse of the under-construction flyover in Girish Park.
Meanwhile, two more bodies were recovered from ground zero at Ganesh Talkies crossing. Both decomposed bodies were pulled out by the National Disaster Response Force and civil defence personnel from two vehicles lying trapped under the flyover’s collapsed structure after a stench started emanating in the wee hours of the day. Special additional commissioner of police (headquarters) Supratim Sarkar said the death toll reached 26, including two female victims, following the recovery of the two bodies.
Tanmoy Seal (48), the arrested accused, was closely associated with the project from its beginning. The resident of Bally in Howrah was caught from Burdwan in the afternoon.
Joint commissioner of police (crime) Debashish Boral said, “Tanmoy, posted as the assistant general manager (projects) at the Hyderabad-based construction company’s Beadon street branch office, was in charge of supervising day-to-day work starting from soil testing to test filling to raw materials’ supply at the project site since July 2009.”
He added, “Tanmoy used to visit the site hourly. He also visited the site on March 31.”
Tanmoy however claimed to the investigators he was the architect of six bridges, including two across the rivers in Goa and Jamshedpur, sources revealed.
Mr Mallikarjun, manager (structural VRF) Pradip Kumar Saha and assistant general manager (administration) Debajyoti Majumdar, arrested on Friday on several charges including murder, were remanded to nine days’ police custody by the city sessions court.
Mr Boral said the four-member team which visited Hyderabad served notices to six board of director members of IVRCL to face questioning. He informed that chief engineer Priyotosh Bhattacharya, superintendent engineer Subhankar Bhattacharya and executive engineer Santanu Mondal of the KMDA, the state urban development department’s nodal agency involved in carrying out the project, were grilled.
The chief engineer and the executive engineer have been suspended by the state government in the wake of the incident. Asked about the allegations on Rajat Bakshi, nephew of Trinamul Congress leader Sanjoy Bakshi, getting the sub-contract for supplying raw material through his syndicate to the project, Mr Boral however said, “None of those arrested or questioned by us took his name.”
Meanwhile, two more bodies were recovered from ground zero at Ganesh Talkies crossing. Both decomposed bodies were pulled out by the National Disaster Response Force and civil defence personnel from two vehicles lying trapped under the flyover’s collapsed structure at Kali Krishna Tagore Street, after a stench started emanating in the wee hours of the day.
Special additional commissioner of police (headquarters) Supratim Sarkar said the death toll reached 26, including two female victims, following the recovery of the two bodies. He added that 15 injured have been admitted in different hospitals.
In the morning Rabindra Sarani, which had been closed for vehicular movement since the incident, was thrown open for traffic. Only small vehicles are allowed to ply on the road for now. However, chaos broke out as common people stopped while passing by the spot and thronged to have a glimpse of the collapsed flyover. The police had a tough time dispersing them.
