Journalism of Courage
A day after a massive hoarding crashed on a busy road at the Shahir Amar Shaikh junction near Juna Bazaar, killing four and leaving 10 others injured, Pune City Police arrested two engineers with the Indian Railways on charges of negligence.
Police have identified the suspects as Sanjaysingh Vishnudevsingh (42) and Pandurang Nivrutti Vanare (57), who were responsible for work pertaining to hoardings. The hoarding was located on railway land. Meanwhile, police are looking for the contractor who was in charge of removing the hoarding, and his workers, who have been booked under sections 304 (2) and 34 of the Indian Penal Code.
An auto rickshaw driver, Kiran Rajaram Jadhav (36), has lodged the first information report (FIR) in the case at the Bundgarden police station. The hoarding, located on railway land, was rented out to private advertising contractors through tenders, said officials.
Recently, Railways had directed two of its contractors to strengthen old hoarding structures. While one contractor did so, the other allegedly didn’t follow the instructions, and railway officials had subsequently barred the contractor from using the hoardings for commercial purposes. Later, railway officials asked the contractor to remove the hoardings to avoid any untoward incident, but he didn’t do so. Finally, the Railways hired civil contractors to remove the hoardings. While four of the hoardings had been removed successfully, the mishap took place when the fifth hoarding was being removed on Friday afternoon, as it crashed and fell on several vehicles.
Police have alleged that the accused railway employees and the contractor had neither informed police nor the local administration about their plans to take down the hoardings. They had not taken any preventive measures to avoid such a mishap, said police.
Meanwhile, Vishnudevsingh and Vanare were produced before the magistrate’s court in Pune, where police sought their custody for seven days. Police said custodial interrogation of the duo was essential to procure information about the accused contractor and workers. Defence lawyers Tosif Shaikh and B A Aloor, however, opposed the plea for police custody of the accused. The court remanded the duo to police custody till October 11 for further investigation.
