The official death toll in the Garden Reach cave-in climbed to 11 on Thursday, and six men were arrested in connection with the tragedy.
At the last count, 19 people had been rescued, injured but alive, since the under-construction warehouse’s roof collapsed on Monday afternoon, bringing down with it tonnes of concrete and giant steel beams.
Police said no register was maintained at the construction site, making it difficult to estimate how many people were working there at the time of the crash.
Among the six people arrested is Sambhunath Behera, owner of the company that had taken the land on which the warehouse stood on lease from Calcutta port and was building the roof.
The charges include culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Late at night, Kalicharan Banerjee, officer on special duty to Firhad Hakim when he was Calcutta mayor, became the sixth man to be arrested.
“The rescue operation is in progress. We have no way of knowing the exact number of people working there, as no register was maintained,” additional commissioner (crime) Kunal Agarwal said.
“Five persons, including four mentioned in the FIR, have been arrested,” he added, speaking before Kalicharan’s arrest.
The police identified the four named in the FIR and arrested as Behera, the lessee; Gulzar Hossain, a supervisor with Ayan Traders, the company Behera had hired for the construction; Kamal Samanta, the fabricator; and Dibakar Bhandari, the labour supplier-cum-contractor
of Trimex, which the police said was supplying GI sheets for the roof.
The fifth man named in the FIR, Ayan Traders proprietor Asgar Hussain, died in the crash.
Abdul Hamid, not mentioned in the FIR but arrested, was the broker whom Behera had engaged to handle Kolkata Municipal Corporation permissions for the job.
Asgar had at least two criminal cases against him for alleged extortion, kidnapping and violence, registered with the Ekbalpore and South Port police stations.
Search for Behera
Behera Brothers owner Sambhunath was not in his sixth-floor apartment — made by merging several flats — in a New Alipore high-rise when the police first went there on Wednesday. He was caught sleeping in a friend’s tenth-floor flat early on Thursday morning.
Sources said his family had initially claimed he was not on the premises, but Behera’s phone tower location gave him away.
The police scanned CCTV footage from the building’s lift and identified three floors where they suspected Behera’s family members were moving around.
A team finally zeroed in on the top-floor apartment, from where one of Behera’s family members was seen coming out. The police said the Beheras had more than
five flats in the same apartment block.
ACP (crime) Agarwal said Behera used to run the firm in partnership with his two brothers. But the two brothers left the company several years ago.
The first five men arrested were produced before the Alipore court, charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempt to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and common intention. The maximum punishment for the offences, if proved, can be 10 years. All five have been remanded in police custody till July 4.
Chief public prosecutor Sourin Ghosal told the court that Behera Brothers had paid a ₹20-lakh bribe to the civic body to get the building plan sanctioned.
“The company had also mandated the contractor to complete the project within a cost of ₹2.4 crore. Hence, the contractor used inferior quality of cement, aluminium and other construction materials,” Ghosal said.
He referred to a building collapse in Maharashtra’s Thane district and the councillor’s arrest there. “We have to probe the role of all the officials and individuals involved,” he said.
Cause hunt
Apart from a special investigation team made up of officers from the detective department and Taratala police station that will probe the crash, a committee has been formed to look into what caused it.
“…There are apprehensions that the construction work was being done without following proper norms…,” a government order announcing the inquiry committee said.
Rajesh Pandey, additional chief secretary in the youth services and ports department, will head the committee, which includes Khalil Ahmed, additional chief secretary (urban development); Rajesh Kumar Sinha, principal secretary (disaster management); police commissioner Ajay Nand; corporation administrator Smita Pandey; and representatives of Rites (Rail India Technical and Economic Service), Ircon (Indian Railway Construction Ltd) and IIT Kharagpur.
The committee will make its recommendations within a week on how to prevent recurrences and institutionalise a mechanism for third-party audits of under-construction sites