Mulund Metro mishap: Site engg, supervisor granted bail

The accused duo were not on duty at the time of the incident, and no fruitful purpose would be served by keeping them in jail, the court noted

MUMBAI: The sessions court on Tuesday granted bail to a site supervisor and a site engineer booked in connection with parapet collapse incident at a metro site in Mulund on February 14, which killed one person.

The incident occurred around 12.20pm on February 14 on the arterial LBS Road in Mulund, when a portion of a precast parapet segment collapsed on the road beneath, killing one person and injuring three others (Hindustan Times)

While engineer Saurabh Singh and supervisor Prashant Haribhau Bhoir were both employed by Milan Road Buildtech, the firm carrying out construction work at the site, they were not on duty at the time of the incident, and no fruitful purpose would be served by keeping them in jail, the court noted.

The incident occurred around 12.20pm on February 14 on the arterial LBS Road in Mulund, when a portion of a precast parapet segment collapsed on the road beneath, killing one person and injuring three others. The Mulund police subsequently booked several persons associated with the project including project manager Kuldip Sapkal, engineer Singh, Harish Tejsingh Chohan, welder Ramashish, project consultant T Sai Suresh Kumar and project manager Avadhut Inamdar from the DB-Hill International-Louis Berger consortium, which was the general consultant for the project.

Advocate Suvarna Avhad-Vast, who represented Singh and Bhoir, told the court that they had been falsely implicated in the case, as on the date of the incident, they were not on duty. Both accused had extended all possible assistance to the rescue team and victims and helped arrange a crane immediately after the incident. They had also contacted Fortis Hospital at Mulund for treatment of the injured victims and had co-operated continuously with investigating officers, yet they were arrested, Avhad-Vast said.

The lawyer, who had procured bail for three other accused in the case last week, said section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita was not applicable to the facts involved; hence, the accused duo should be granted bail.

The public prosecutor opposed the plea, claiming the offence was serious – one person had died and three others who were injured were still under treatment, with one being serious. The accused duo were involved in the offence and if bail was granted to them, they would not remain present or co-operate with the probe. It was the common responsibility of all the accused to ensure adequate precautions were taken at the site, and how the incident occurred needed to be investigated, the public prosecutor. One of the accused was a site engineer and the other a site supervisor, and it was their duty to be present on site and guide the staff, he said.

The court, however, said that apparently the incident occurred because of the mistake of the welder, who has been arrested in the case, and no fruitful purpose would be served by continuing to keep the two accused in jail, as nothing was to be recovered from them.

A probe by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) had found that temporary fasteners used to hold the parapet segment in place were “inadvertently” cut off by the welder, leading to the incident.