Delhi court raps CBI over failing to probe senior civic officials over UPSC aspirant deaths in ’24

A Delhi court criticized the CBI for inadequate investigation into officials linked to a library's illegal operation at a coaching center where three students drowned.

NEW DELHI

The building where the incident took place. (HT Archive)

A Delhi court rapped the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for not sufficiently investigating senior officials who had violated rules in allowing a library to be run at the basement of Rau’s IAS coaching centre, where three students drowned in 2024.

The court emphasised that merely saying that the lowest official in the hierarchy was unable to perform his duties “will not suffice the matter.”

In a detailed order released on Friday, principal district and sessions judge Dinesh Bhatt said, “The IO (investigating officer) has not investigated from the perspective of dereliction of duties by the concerned officials in regard to the usage of the said building as coaching centre in the basement”.

“It was the duty of the supervising officers to see that necessary compliance were being carried out on the ground and also their subordinates were putting up proper and complete reports after actual inspections,” the court said.

On July 27, 2024, heavy rains flooded the basement of Rau’s IAS coaching centre in Old Rajendra Nagar, where Nevin Dalvin, Tanya Soni, and Shreya Yadav, all UPSC aspirants, drowned. The basement was being illegally used as a library despite being sanctioned only for parking and storage.

As reported by HT a day before, the court went on to direct the CBI to carry out further investigation in the matter, with respect to the issue of probable dereliction of duties or corrupt practices by the officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). The court termed that such probable practices as “being instrumental in loss of lives of innocent citizens”.

The court directed the federal agency to file a report after completing the probe.

The court observed that CBI, in its supplementary charge sheet, had named the joint engineer (JE) of the Karol Bagh zone as an accused, without finding the involvement of any other superior official in the dereliction of duties.

The court said, “It is very difficult to believe that none of the supervisory officers of the said JE could have been aware of the illegal and unauthorised use of basement of even the proceedings and inspections being carried out by their juniors…there could possibly be a conscious effort to ignore or permit the illegal use of the basement of the said coaching institute”.

The court noted that the fact that the area in question was low lying, prone to waterlogging and flooding, as seen through several incidents in the past, was given a go-by by officials who are yet to be investigated.

J Dalvin Suresh, whose son Nevin was one of the three victims, has filed the protest petition, stating that the federal agency had ignored material facts pertaining to the case that could establish criminal liability of several persons.

The petition, moved by advocate Abhijeet Anand, essentially sought a further probe into multiple aspects and a supplementary charge sheet thereafter. Among those aspects, the plea contended that the agency had incorrectly stated the building’s height to be slightly over 14 metres, citing an electricity department inspection report that measured it above 15 metres.

The plea contended that the CBI’s investigation failed to probe how MCD officials sanctioned the building without the commissioner’s authorisation and issued an occupancy certificate despite the owner’s death in March 2021. The counsel claimed that the agency had also overlooked the fact that soil testing was not carried out before constructing the building.

The CBI’s counsel maintained that its investigation had been thorough and all relevant evidence had been examined. The agency said it found no violation in the issuance of the completion certificate and that the role of MCD, fire department, and Delhi Jal Board officials were adequately probed, with officers found culpable already named in the supplementary charge sheet.