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A year on, families of victims of Virar hospital fire await trial
The hospital, which is currently undergoing renovation to comply with state safety norms, will reopen sometime in October 2022
Mumbai Even after the Arnala coastal police had filed an 1,850-page chargesheet in July 2021 before the Vasai court on last year’s Vijay Vallabh Hospital fire, which led to the death of 15 Covid patients, the trial for the case is yet to begin.
The hospital, which is currently undergoing renovation to comply with state safety norms, will reopen sometime in October 2022.
The Vasai court observed that only six fire extinguishers were functional in the hospital. The 14 other extinguishers were not working and their operational validity had also expired, which the hospital management failed to renew.
Also, the hospital didn’t have an NOC, as they didn’t apply for a fire audit with the Vasai civic body. The Vasai civic body is supposed to send a private fire engineer to conduct an audit and send a report to the civic body for the NOC.
Furthermore, the hospital underused the sanctioned power supply and was not running on optimum power usage, observed the Vasai court.
“The Vasai court will soon frame the charges and start the trial,” said the police.
Meanwhile, the state government had sanctioned ₹5 lakh each to the kin of the deceased, while the Centre sanctioned ₹2 lakh each. On Saturday, relatives offered floral tributes in front of the hospital in memory of the 15 victims.
In the early hours of April 23, 2021, 15 Covid patients were charred to death after fire broke out in the intensive care unit (ICU) caused by a blast in the air-conditioner at the 90-bed hospital.
The chargesheet named the directors and owners including Bastimal Shah, his son Dr Dilip Bastimal Shah (57), and Dr Shailesh Dharamdev Pathak (48).The three were held under Sections 304 (causing death by negligence), 337 and 338 (whoever causes hurt to any person by doing any act so rashly or negligently as to endanger human life, or the personal safety of others) of the IPC. The trio were released on bail in mid-May in 2021, by justice Surendra Tavade.
