Police want HPCL Dy GM moved out

Visakhapatnam, Sept 28: The Vishakhpatnam Police Commissioner R P Meena has written to HPCL chairman HL Zutshi seeking either suspension or...

Visakhapatnam, Sept 28: The Vishakhpatnam Police Commissioner R P Meena has written to HPCL chairman HL Zutshi seeking either suspension or transfer of Vizag refinery Deputy General Manager (Operations) K Srinivasan to facilitate investigation by the police into the September 14 blast, which killed 57 persons.

In his letter, the Police Commissioner stated that continuation of Srinivasan in his present post would make it difficult for the police to obtain evidence, as he headed the operations division which was directly responsible for any thing that went wrong at the refinery.

Following a directive from a court in the city, Meena had ordered an investigation into the incident under Sections 304 and 334 of the IPC. The court had given the directive following a petition by a law student seeking action against the HPCL top brass, holding them responsible for the blast.

Though on the day of the blast itself a case was registered against the HPCL management, investigation picked up momentum after the court directive.

Meena has already interrogated SK Kerr and SD Mathur, both HPCL directors, and refinery’s Executive Director MA Tankiwala Incidentally, when a similar blast occurred at the refinery in November last year, then too police had found Srinivasan responsible for it. Moreover, the Police Commissioner, in his letter, had mentioned the registration of the case against Srinivasan after the November blast. According to sources, Meena had also mentioned the evidence the police had gathered against Srinvasan. It stated that Srinivasan had sent LPG to Additional Tankage Area (ATGO), instead of sending it to BPCL.

However, HPCL Director (Personnel) SK Kerr had stated that the departmental inquiry instituted after the mishap had found nothing incriminating against Srinivasan.

Meanwhile, Forensic Science Laboratory Director KPC Gandhi recently inspected the blast site with his experts and sent the samples for analysis, but found no traces of any explosive material. Police are looking for details of the LPG discharged from Nanga Parbat, the volume of the gas sent into spheres, from when pressure began building up in the pipeline, when the rebound of the gas took place and when it finally cracked leaking the LPG, considered the most inflammable of all petroleum products, into the open to form a vapour cloud over the refinery.