Kin of Morbi victims to take out march from Sabarmati Ashram to CM house to mark 1-year of accident

The representation has been addressed to the Prime Minister’s office, Chief Minister’s office, director general of Gujarat Police and Ahmedabad police commissioner.

Noting that the final SIT report that had investigated the Morbi bridge collapse had pinned the responsibility of the mishap on the Oreva Group, which was in charge of operation, maintenance and renovation of the bridge, and its director and employees, the representation said, “This loss in our lives can never be filled but it is our kind request to conduct speedy trial and award life sentence to the company’s director and the accused in the case. It is then that the souls of the departed can rest in peace.”

Oreva Group managing director Jaysukh Patel is facing charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder after the bridge collapsed on October 30 last year. His company was responsible for the operation and maintenance of the bridge. He was named in the chargesheet submitted by the police before the court on January 27 and his role has been attributed to directly supervising and issuing instructions pertaining to repair and renovation of the bridge.

The final report by the special investigation team (SIT) probing the Morbi bridge collapse has broadly blamed the Morbi municipality chief officer and the Oreva Group for various technical and administrative lapses, leading to the accident.

The report was submitted to the Gujarat government on October 9. The report accused Oreva of several technical lapses. It said that the company did not prepare a detailed project report as recommended for such structures, no assessment of the main cable or suspenders of the bridge were carried out, condition of the pulley was not assessed and there was no documentation on the structural capacity of the deck and neither were methodologies or techniques to be adopted for repair works studied, the report added.

Further, while the municipality had tasked Oreva to carry out repair and renovation work of the bridge through its MoU with the company, the company assigned a “non-competent agency” for the work, the report said, adding that the repair work was then carried out “without consulting technical experts”.