Kolkata, Sept. 20 -- Kolkata Police has submitted a massive 2,000-page chargesheet before the Alipore Court against seven accused persons in connection with the fatal collapse of the under-construction warehouse in Taratala.

The names mentioned as accused in the chargesheet include Kalicharan Banerjee, the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the former Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim and a Sub Assistant Engineer of the KMC, identified as Aminur Sheikh. The other five named in the chargesheet include warehouse owner and lessee Sambhunath Behera, structural engineer Kamal Samanta, alongside key project associates Syed MD Gulzar Hussain, Dibakar Bhandari, and Abdul Hamid. On Saturday, police filed the chargesheet before the Alipore Court. In the chargesheet statements of around 100 witnesses were recorded.

It may be mentioned that the disaster occurred on June 24, when a massive concrete structure of an under-construction warehouse on Transport Depot Road collapsed. Following the incident, a large-scale rescue operation involving the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Eastern Railway, along with other state agencies, was initiated. The four-day-long rescue operation managed to rescue 17 persons, while 16 construction workers were killed in the tragic incident. To probe the incident, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed.

The charges slapped on seven accused include culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempt to commit culpable homicide, and common intention. The investigators revealed that the catastrophe was the result of widespread and systematic operational negligence. Forensic and structural evaluations showed that the warehouse deviated drastically from the sanctioned municipal plans. The construction bypassed critical soil testing, relied on grossly substandard materials and suffered from fatal flaws where iron beams buckled under the weight of wet concrete.

Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari had pointed his finger at the Hakim led regime and had alleged that Banerjee was the key person responsible for passing any building plan.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.