Kolkata: The toll in flyover collapse rose to 26 with two more bodies recovered on Saturday, even as political slugfest over the city’s worst flyover tragedy heightened with the opposition sharpening its attack on the ruling Trinamool Congress, two days ahead of the first round of assembly elections.
Rescuers on the day pulled out two decomposed bodies two days after the under-construction Vivekananda Road Flyover in north Kolkata’s market area Posta collapsed, crushing people and flattening vehicles.
At least 90 people were injured in the accident of which several are still admitted in various hospitals.
Tightening the screws against the Hyderabad-based IVRCL Infrastructure, which was executing the project, police arrested one more of its officials Tanmay Sil, taking the total of number of arrests to four.
Bringing charges of murder and criminal conspiracy among other offences, police, which have constituted a special investigation team (SIT), had on Friday night arrested the company’s senior assistant general manager M. Mallikarjun, structural manager Pradip Kumar and assistant manager (administration) D. Majumdar.
The trio on the day was remanded to police custody by a city court.
Besides sealing off the companys’ city offices, a Kolkata police team also visited its headquarters in Hyderabad.
The chief engineer and an executive engineer of the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA)- the state government unit in charge of the JNNURM project – have been placed under suspension.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited the collapse site and also interacted with the injured at a city hospital.
Later addressing his maiden rally for the assembly polls in Niyamatpur of Burdwan district, he hit out at the Trinamool describing the collapsed flyover as a “symbol of the state of affairs in West Bengal”.
“People died. Mamataji said it was not a political issue. She said there should be no politics with it. She was right… But the flyover is a symbol.
“No work was done in the flyover project for five years. It remained as it was,” said Gandhi alleging “Trinamool men” were constructing the flyover.
“The flyover collapses and people die. After all who suffers? It’s not the Trinamool men. The ones I met in the hospital have suffered,” he added.
The BJP which has been demanding a CBI probe, claimed the IVRCL Infrastructure had links with the Trinamool since 2011 when Banerjee was the railways minister.
“The company’s links with the Trinamool goes back to when Mamata was the railways minister. She then had awarded a contract for building the Srinagar-Udhampur-Baramula tunnel,” BJP national secretary S N Singh said quoting an IRCON document.
“She is now trying to evade responsibility by saying that the contract of the flyover was awarded to IVRCL by the Left Front government. (IANS)
