The detective department fears losing key witnesses in the house-collapse case against realtor Pradip Kundalia if his trial is further delayed.

“Some of the witnesses in the original list of 30 may no longer be willing to testify, and the elderly ones may be no more, if the case continues to drag,” an officer involved in the investigation said after yet another postponement this week.

Kundalia was booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder after the Bhowanipore apartment block he had built collapsed in 1989, killing 11 people.

The last hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed to November 5 after a member of the legal team representing Kundalia and 11 co-accused told the additional district judge of the 15th court in Alipore that one of the defence lawyers was absent.

“Every scheduled hearing in the past 19 years has been postponed for one reason or the other. I don’t know the exact figure but hearings have been deferred not less than 25 times. Once a chargesheet is submitted, courts generally take a day to frame charges,” the officer said, voicing the frustration of the investigation team that had built the case against the realtor.

According to official records, the case was shifted from one court to another three times since 1989 — from the 12th court to the 14th court and then to the 15th.

“Our work was over in 1990. We submitted a supplementary chargesheet in 1992. Since then, we have been counting the days for the trial to begin,” said Jawed Shamim, the deputy commissioner of the detective department.

A senior lawyer alleged that the legal team representing Kundalia and the co-accused had worked out a strategy to delay the judicial process.

“Officially, each of the 12 accused is represented by a different lawyer. The 12 lawyers never turn up together on the scheduled date. One or two of them are always absent and that becomes the reason to postpone the hearing the moment the public prosecutor talks about framing charges.”

One of the investigators claimed the evidence against Kundalia was strong enough to nail him. “We have mentioned in the chargesheet that Kundalia forged documents of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation to construct the building. The materials used in construction, too, were of inferior quality.”