The mayor of Morbi, Gujarat, where a cable bridge collapsed on Sunday, killing 135, was questioned by police for four hours today.
The municipal corporation’s chief executive officer, Sandeepsinh Zala, was asked to explain the fine print of the agreement signed with Gujarat-based watchmaker Oreva to renovate the century-old cable bridge.
Documents filed in a local court investigating the tragedy show that the contractors hired for the renovation were unqualified for the job. For the renovation, the subcontractor only painted and polished the cables. The same firm, despite being unqualified, had been awarded a contract in 2007.
One of the key questions the police asked Mr Zala was whether they had determined how many people the old bridge could hold without jeopardising safety during the signing of the agreement with Oreva.
According to investigators, the contract was signed directly with Oreva without going through a bidding process.
The police have been chastised for allegedly failing to pursue the top executives of the Oreva group, which includes Ajanta Manufacturing Pvt Ltd, which has a significant presence in BJP-ruled Gujarat. The nine people arrested in the case are Oreva employees and security guards assigned to crowd control at the bridge.
The allegations were denied by the police. They stated that they are not attempting to protect anyone, but rather to trace the origins of the agreement signed between the municipal body and a firm with no prior experience with this type of project.
“We are investigating every aspect. We are establishing the chain of events from the beginning until the incident, and we will take action against anyone found to be culpable in the matter,” Morbi police chief Rahul Tripathi told reporters.
Mr Tripathi denied protecting government employees and the company’s owner. “We are not protecting anyone,” he stated.
The First Information Report, or FIR, does not identify the owner of Oreva and Ajanta Manufacturing. Gujarat’s assembly election is also coming up in less than two months.
The bridge collapsed under the weight of the massive crowd, according to Gujarat’s top forensics laboratory. The growing crowds put strain on the bridge’s structural integrity, resulting in the tragedy. The contractor only replaced the bridge’s tiles but did not replace the old cables.
