The smokescreen around Chatterjee International on Tuesday mirrored the haze of illegality and uncertainty that has engulfed the Chowringhee landmark since its construction and more so since its developer disappeared in 1980.
Sources said Binoy Kumar Chatterjee, a civil engineer and owner of construction firm Chatterjee Polk Private Ltd, went missing after a Saradha-like scam broke out and depositors started baying for his blood.
No one has ever heard of Chatterjee since.
At least one court order, issued as late as this year, acknowledged that he had been absconding since 1980. Chatterjee is rumoured to have died in 1996, leaving behind a trail of murky deals and a haze over the ownership of the 23-storeyed Chatterjee International.
Chatterjee had founded Chatterjee Polk Private Ltd with American architect Benjamin Kauffman Polk and bought the 36-cottah Chowringhee plot where the fire-scarred building stands in 1974.
Polk, from Des Moines in Iowa, came to India in the 1950s. He had designed several famous structures in the subcontinent, like Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu, Buddhist Tripitaka Library in Yangon and Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in Amritsar.
Chatterjee started steering the company on his own after Polk left India in the late 1960s.
Chatterjee International became ready in 1977 and soon after, Chatterjee Polk Private Ltd started selling office space in the building.
Sources said the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) had sanctioned 13 floors but Chatterjee illegally constructed 23 floors. A court record of 1978 reveals that Calcutta High Court had directed the firm to pay a penalty of Rs 2.75 lakh to the civic body to regularise the building.
The sources said Chatterjee also ran a deposit mobilisation firm and raised around Rs 5 crore in the late 1970s. “He went missing in 1980 after failing to repay the depositors, who had been promised a high return,” said a source.
Chatterjee’s pyramid scheme collapsed the same year Sanchayita, another deposit mobilisation firm, went bust.
Chatterjee got involved in other legal battles as well. Engineers India Ltd (EIL), a central public sector company and an occupant of the 16th floor of the building, hauled him to court for allegedly reneging on commitments. The firm pleaded for the appointment of an administrator for the property.
EIL’s contention was that Chatterjee Polk had not finished work on installing a lift and building a proper staircase.
The court-appointed administrator looked after the property till 2000, when a dispute over its upkeep landed in court once again.
On May 4 that year, the court asked the 150 owners of the 255 office units in the building to form a registered association.
An association was formed in December but it was never registered. The association has since been managing the property.
Complaints about poor maintenance were rampant when the court-appointed administrator looked after the building, as they have been since the association assumed responsibility.
Till the late 1990s, the outer walls above the ground floor were decorated with an intricate design on blue-green granite and marble. Because of poor upkeep, the marble tiles would come loose and fall off, posing a risk to pedestrians.
Later, the CMC’s building department carried out an inspection and detected cracks in basement columns.
The CMC served a “vacation notice” to all occupants in the late 1990s before restoring the building. The building was restored in 2005. It got a fresh coat of paint and the occupants pooled money to put together a fire-fighting system, comprising wet hydrants, an underground reservoir and a huge stack of fire extinguishers. None of that was of much use when the fire broke out on the 15th floor on Tuesday.
Harsh Gupta of Sunderlal and Sons, who owns three floors of the property, said the building’s upkeep had been shoddy. “The association has failed to do its job. The office-bearers haven’t changed in the past 12 years and elections have not been held in three years. We have moved the high court seeking a free and fair election,” Gupta said.
