Balco case: Chinese officials got bail on NREGS card holders surety

A Tribal National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme NREGS card holder stood surety for the bail of three Chinese officials...

A Tribal National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme NREGS card holder stood surety for the bail of three Chinese officials of the Shandong Electric Power Construction Corps SEPCO arrested on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and other offences in the Balco chimney collapse case.

The chimney had collapsed at the Balco plant near Korba leading to the death of 40 workers on September 23 last year. Wu Chunnan,Liu Gaoxuan,and Wang Weiquing engineers of Chinese firm SEPCO were subsequently arrested by the Korba police.

A poor tribal,Indra Bhawan Singh a NREGS card holder of village Basibar village in Katghora Tehsil in Korba district is among the two people,who stood surety in a local court so that the SEPCOs Chinese staff could get bail, senior Congress legislator and former minister Mohammad Akbar told the media,releasing copies of bonds executed by the villagers and list of NREGA beneficiaries of Korba district. One Raju 32 of village Kuchena had provided the second mandatory surety for the Chinese officials with both producing Rs 50,000 bonds for each Chinese national.

Similarly another accused an engineer from Haryana who was booked by the police for allegedly tampering with evidence got bail after another tribal villager Horidas,who is listed as living below the poverty line BPL stood surety for him, Akbar pointed out.

Alleging that these poor tribals were either coerced or misled by someone to stand as sureties for Chinese Nationals unknown to them,Akbar said he has written a letter to External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and Union Law,Justice and Company Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily explaining the situation and requesting them to order a probe to find out who was behind this development.

Akbar said an appropriate action in this matter was necessary at a time when a debate was raging in the country over Union Carbide Corporation UCC former Chairman Warren Anderson jumping bail and leaving the country after the Bhopal Gas Disaster.

BJP is raising a bogey over Anderson but its own government in Chhattisgarh is totally silent after influential industrialists are apparently trying to subvert the legal process by roping in poor tribal farmers as sureties for foreigners,he alleged.

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For Anderson,a Union Carbide India Limited UCIL employee A N Kuruvilla stood surety. But in this case it is surprising that none of the officials of Bharat Aluminum Company Limited Balco or of Chinese firm SEPCO came forward to stand surety for them. Poor tribals were apparently persuaded to stand surety to Chinese nationals,who are not known to them. The intentions are certainly doubtful, he added.