Supreme Court refuses temporary relief to Oreva MD Jaysukh

The Gujarat High Court is scheduled to take up Jaysukh Patel’s bail plea on December 12. Jaysukh Patel has filed for regular bail, apart from two applications seeking interim bail, pending a final decision on his regular bail application, before the High Court. He has been in jail since January.

Represented by senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi before the Supreme Court, Jaysukh Patel’s plea for interim bail before the SC was disposed of by a bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Aravind Kumar. The court gave direction to the Gujarat HC after Rohatgi submitted that Jaysukh’s bail plea before the Gujarat HC had not been taken up on nearly 10 occasions when it was listed for hearing.

Several family members of those who were killed in the Morbi tragedy had moved applications before the top court, represented by senior advocate S Muralidhar and advocate Utkarsh Dave, to be impleaded as parties to Jaysukh Patel’s plea for interim bail before the top court.

Patel’s petition before the Supreme Court states that he has “erroneously been made an accused by holding the petitioner (Patel) vicariously liable for the acts allegedly caused by Ajanta (part of Oreva Group)” and that there were “no specific instructions governing Ajanta’s management of the suspension bridge which was an act of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).”

Patel further submitted that while the chargesheet against him alleges that Oreva Group carried out the repairs on the bridge through the contractor where the quality of repairs was not up to the mark, “the said allegation cannot stand on its legs since there is no parameter to decide upon the quality of work.”

He also referred to the SIT report, adding that “the unfortunate incident was occasioned due to several other factors” including that CCTV footage of the bridge from the time of the incident showed “the structure shaking violently and people holding cables and fencing on either side of the bridge before the deck collapsed.”

The final SIT report had broadly pinned technical and administrative lapses on the Oreva Group.