A day after one of the co-owners of the TRP Game Zone in Rajkot and a manager were arrested for their alleged role in a massive fire that killed 28 people, including children, another co-owner of the facility was arrested on Monday. A local court in the city sent the three accused to police custody for 14 days.
The Rajkot Crime Branch on Monday arrested Rahul Rathod, the second co-owner of the facility apprehended in the case. The Crime Branch had arrested his partner Yuvrajsinh Solanki, and manager Nitin Jain, alias Nitin Lodha, on Sunday. Six co-owners were running the facility in partnership, officials had said earlier. All six of them have been booked over the fire incident.
On Monday, Rathod, Solanki and Jain were produced in a local court by the Crime Branch with an application seeking their remand for 14 days. The court approved the appeal, and sent the accused to 14-day custody of the Rajkot Crime Branch. “We demanded the maxium number of days of remand as the accused, we told the court, are evasive, hiding many facts and not cooperating in the inveistigaiton. The court granted our plea and sent the trio to 14-day remand,” Tushar Gokani, a Rajkot-based lawyer whom the government has appointed as special public prosecutor for the case, told The Indian Express.
Solanki and Rathod were partners in Raceway Enterprise. The firm was running the TRP Game Zone in partnership with Dhaval Corporation, a proprietorship firm. “Jain is a native of Rajasthan but has settled in Rajkot for the past three-four years and was working as manager of TRP Game Zone,” a senior police told The Indian Express, adding that Solanki and Rathod too are residents of Rajkot.