Five weeks after Jaysukh Patel, the managing director of Ajanta Manufacturing Private Limited (AMPL) of Oreva Group, surrendered following an arrest warrant issued against him in connection with the Jhulto Pul suspension bridge collapse, police filed a supplementary chargesheet on Friday, naming Patel as the prime accused. The chargesheet against the industrialist, whose firm had the operations and maintenance contract of the bridge, comes three days after a Morbi court rejected his plea seeking interim bail for arranging funds to pay compensation to 135 people who had been killed in the bridge collapse on October 30 last year. Pratipalsin Zala, the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) of Morbi division, who was the investigating officer (IO) in the case, filed the supplementary chargesheet against Patel in a local court in Morbi on Friday. The historic cable-stayed bridge, constructed in 1987 across river Machchhu in Morbi town, collapsed on October 30 last year after its steel cable snapped. More than 300 people who were on the bridge then plunged into the river. While 135 of them died, primarily due to drowning, a few dozen others were injured. The police registered a case under IPC sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 338 (causing grievous hurt by doing acts so rashly or negligently as to endanger life or personal safety of others) and 114 (abetter present when offence is committed), among others. The police soon arrested Dipak Parekh, Dinesh Dave, Mansukh Topiya, Madev Solanki, Alpesh Gohil, Mukesh Chauhan, Dilip Gohil, Prakash Parmar and Devang Parmar. While Parekh and Dave are managers with AMPL, Topiya and Solanki were employed by AMPL as ticket-booking clerks on either end of the bridge. Alpesh, Chauhan and Dilip were posted as security guards at the bridge while Prakash, a resident of Dhrangadhra in neighbouring Surendranagar district and his son Devang had undertaken the repair and renovation of the Jhulto Pul between March and October last year after AMPL awarded the contract to Devang. Prakash had done repairing work on the suspension bridge in 2008 too after the then collector of Rajkot district, of which Morbi was a part, handed over operations and maintenance of the bridge to AMPL for nine years through a memorandum of understanding (MoU), the police said. Morbi municipality, which owned the bridge, signed another MoU with AMPL on March 7, 2022, handing the bridge’s oversight to Patel’s firm for 15 years. “We took 90 days to file the main chargesheet after discovering all possible evidence. The role of Patel was also mentioned in it and therefore, the supplementary chargesheet has nothing substantial,” a source close to the case said. In the main chargesheet, the police had claimed that Jaysukh Bhalodia alias Jaysukh Patel overtook operations and maintenance of the Jhulto Pul suspension bridge through the March 2022 MoU, but rushed the renovation and repairs of the bridge in six months instead of the eight to 12 months mentioned in the MoU. As per the chargesheet, the APML MD didn’t take due care during repair and renovation, nor did he take any technical assistance “despite knowing it himself that doing so can lead to some accident and that tourists visiting Jhulto Pul can be killed or suffer physical injuries.” The chargesheet further underlines that AMPL didn’t obtain any certificate of strength and stability of the bridge before throwing it open to visitors again on October 26. While the nine were arrested a day after the incident, Patel had remained on the run even after a Morbi court issued an arrest warrant against him and the police also got a lookout circular (LOC) against the businessman. After remaining underground for more than three months, Patel eventually surrendered in a Morbi court on January 31 this year. His surrender came two days after the police filed a chargesheet against the other nine accused. The supplementary chargesheet against Patel in the case comes three days after the Morbi court on Tuesday rejected his application seeking interim bail. All the accused are currently lodged in judicial custody.
