Two days after gaming zone fire, Rajkot top cop, RMC commissioner transferred

Vidhi Choudhary, additional commissioner of police (crime, traffic and administration), and Sudhir Desai, deputy commissioner of police of zone-2 of Rajkot city police have also been transferred by the same order. TRP Game Zone on the posh Nana Mava Road falls under zone-2 of Rajkot.

Brajesh Kumar Jha, a 1999-batch IPS officer, has been appointed the new commissioner of Rajkot police, the order stated. It also appointed Mahendra Bagria, superintendent of police of Kutch (west), as the new additional commissioner of Rajkot, and Jagdish Bangarwa, superintendent of Vadodara Central Jail, as the new DCP of Rajkot zone-2.

“These transfers have definitely to do with the fire incident. However, it is not that they are at fault for that. It was an unfortunate incident and we have transferred them given the present circumstances,” a senior government functionary told The Indian Express.

The state General Administration Department, which transferred Rajkot municipal commissioner Anand Patel, has appointed Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) chief executive officer DP Desai as his replacement. Patel, a 2010-batch IAS officer, was appointed Rajkot municipal commissioner on May 4, 2023.

The top officers’ transfers followed the suspension of seven officials, including two police inspectors, for alleged dereliction of duty in connection with the indoor gaming zone tragedy. An official release from the state government said the officers were suspended following instructions from Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel who visited the accident site Sunday. It said the officers allowed “the gaming zone to open without due approvals and thereby, showed utter carelessness and committed dereliction of duty”.

Apart from police inspectors V R Patel, who was in charge of Rajkot taluka police station in 2023, and N I Rathod, who was holding additional charge of the licence branch of the Rajkot city police, executive engineers M R Suma and Paras Khothiya of the Roads and Buildings Department, two Rajkot Municipal Corporation staff — assistant engineer Jaydip Chaudhary and assistant town planner Gautam Joshi — and Rohit Vigora, who was in charge of the fire station on Kalavad Road have also been suspended.

Incidentally, Anand Patel had signed the suspension orders of Chaudhary and Joshi for not taking action against TRP Game Zone for three years even as it continued to function without due clearance. According to officials, the facility did not have a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the fire department.

Police inspectors Patel and Rathod processed an application filed by Raceway Enterprise — one of the firms operating TRP Game Zone — last year seeking a booking licence for their park under the Gujarat Entertainment Tax Act. After receiving the application, the office of the city police commissioner forwarded it to the Rajkot taluka police station inspector for his opinion.

In his opinion dated November 17, 2023, Patel stated that it was a fitting case to issue a licence. Monday’s suspension order alleged that he did it without due diligence. “Prima facie, it appears that he committed a serious lapse in his duty by giving a positive opinion despite the file not containing the NOC certificate of the fire department and the NOC of the PGVCL,” the order stated.

As inspector in charge of the licence branch, it stated, Rathod forwarded the file to the office of the police commissioner without due diligence.

The orders issued by a deputy secretary in the Roads and Buildings Department stated that Suma sent in his positive opinion for Raceway Enterprise’s application without conducting an on-site verification of the plan submitted by the applicant and that Kothiya did not go for on-site verification despite instructions from his department.

In his orders suspending Chaudhary and Joshi, Rajkot Municipal Commissioner Anand Patel highlighted that they took no action against the TRP Game Zone despite the operators having not sought any clearance for their structure, a shed of tin sheets and steel frames.

As for Vigora, the suspension order stated that he did nothing even as the gaming zone set up the ‘TRP Mall’ and functioned without obtaining an NOC from the fire department though he was assigned the duty of supervising fire and emergency services in that area. He was also responsible for spot verification for the purpose of fire NOC, it said.

The police have booked six people for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and arrested two co-owners and a manager of the gaming zone.