<b>Experts' reports trickle in on quake buildings

Experts' reports trickle in on quake buildings Tuesday, April 10, 2001

AHMEDABAD: The forensic reports are in place, the reports from experts in Hyderabad have started trickling in, lapses on the part of civic officials have been established, yet the police is in a quandary over filing chargesheets against the accused.

Two months after the January 26 quake, and the gusto with which the Ahmedabad police took up the investigations into the collapsed buildings has sagged. There is a lull after the arrest of Nandlal Agrawal, the brother of Chiman Aggrawal in the Shikhar building case late last month.

There were promises and promises of booking civic officials, but after 74 arrests of builders accused of culpable homicide in 44 of the 60 cases, the police is now loaded with excuses against taking action on them. "They are languishing in jail awaiting trial and that should be punishment enough for people who have been used to plush AC offices", comes the remark from an official.

Interestingly, the National Council for Cement and Building Material (NCCBM), it was learnt, has sent the reports of the investigations on Shikhar, Mansi and few other buildings whose collapse caused the maximum casualties "but it is all so technical that we need someone to interpret them", confesses a senior police official. So till the experts come in, nothing much can be done.

Police commissioner PC Pande says that only in 10 per cent of the cases, arrests of builders are pending while in cases pertaining to wall collapses and old structures have been shelved for the time being.

The police claims to have tried everything - detain relatives to put pressure on the builders' families, keep tabs on them - but nothing worked, they add.

"The builders saw that all the bail applications of the builders have been rejected, so they are being elusive", says a senior official. But Pande is optimistic, "the investigations are coming to a close", he says tacitly.

Moreover, "In buildings that are very old, one cannot hold the builders solely responsible", says Pande citing maintenance problems as being the other likely reason for their collapse.

Thus, is the case of the Amraiwadi municipal school where 22 children perished, but there was no official complaint. "We cannot be gunning for people like that, so we took up cases where buildings built recently, had collapsed and there was an element of negligence", explains Joint commissioner of police (sector II) MK Tandon.

This apart, there is now a debate in the police circles about when to chargesheet the accused. "We are debating on whether to stick to the deadline of 60 or 90 days for filing the chargesheets, because we want to be doubly sure of facts to be on the safe side", says a top official from the city commissionerate.

Preliminary investigations by the Forensic Science Laboratory, proved that the standard norms had been heavily compromised upon. They also proved, in cases like Mansi, that buildings had collapsed due to overload which were enough to turn down the bail pleas of the builders.

Officials admit that most of the investigation was under pressure of public wrath let loose on politicians. Ironically in these cases which have no precedent yet, the evidence had to be collected from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority, whose officials also figure in the list of the accused, which obviously made it difficult to nail them.

Incidentally, none of them have been identified and the blame generally rests on the town planning officials of both bodies. "If we start booking AMC and AUDA officials, it will have an adverse impact on the investigations and their functioning as well", a senior police official points out.

What remains to be seen is whether the likes of Satish Nyalchand Shah will actually be proven guilty of homicide of 98 innocent persons.

This site is dedicated to our friend Younus M, who passed away on 28th Sept 00, and left on us an indelible memories ! - Team GujaratPlus.com

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