There is this distinct feeling that the government is trying to protect its own. There is no other explanation for the delay by the concerned authorities in according sanction to the Crime Branch of Goa Police to file charge sheets against government officials and engineers allegedly involved in the collapse of the under-construction Ruby Residency building at Canacona.
In a man-made tragedy, the likes of which Goa has never seen before or after, 31 persons died on January 4 this year when the five-storey building that was under construction collapsed. While a shocked Goa was outraged at the sub-standard construction practices in the State, the role of those engineers and officers of various government bodies entrusted with the task of issuing licences and inspecting the quality of the work also emerged.
Just days after the tragedy, the V K Jha commission was constituted to go into the facts of the case. This Commission has submitted its final report, but this has not been made public by the government, though former Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, had promised to table the report in the House. The Commission is independent of the police investigation and is reported to have found various procedural and administrative lapses on the part of government departments. Could this be a reason why the report is being kept away from public eye?
The tabling of the Jha Commission report is also important because it was to recommend measures to avoid such incidents in the future. If even four months after it was submitted to the government it has not been made public, then the State has lost valuable time during which it could have begun to put in place some systems that could make buildings safer in the State.
Ten months after the tragedy the directors of Bharat Developers – Pradip Singh Birring and Jaideep Saigal – remain untraceable, and charges are yet to be filed against the government officials and engineers, some of who had been arrested in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
That the two directors of the company are untraceable defies logic. It doesn’t appear as if the law enforcement agencies have done enough to trace these men. Visiting the company’s offices only to find them closed and returning empty-handed is not what is expected from an investigating team that is probing such a major tragedy. Granted that look-out notices and red corner notices have been issued regarding these two men, but that is a mere procedural practice. The police should have been able to detect the movements of the two men, through their investigations. In this day and age is it so difficult to gather intelligence regarding the locations of the two directors? Perhaps the efforts put in towards this have not been enough.
This is no justice for the 31 people who died in the tragedy, nor is the reason for not filing the charge sheet, which is not lack of evidence of the connivance of the government officials and engineers, but due to delay by the concerned departments in granting permission to prosecute the officials. The investigations, or rather the lack of them, will remain a blot on the police efficiency.
Procedural matters should not be a stumbling block to the delivery of justice, especially not in a tragedy of such proportions. If in January the government was quick in acting against its own and making an example of them by arresting the government officials and engineers, the sudden change of heart is difficult to understand and accept. Occupation certificates had been given to the two buildings just weeks before the collapse. Given that the buildings were under construction, this in itself could not have been done.
The delay in filing charge sheets and also the reluctance of the government to make the Jha Commission report public, lends credence to the allegations made by the Opposition parties in the past months of a politician-bureaucrat-builder nexus in the case. In September the government reinstated two of the former Chief Officers of Canacona Municipal Council, who had been suspended for their role in granting clearances to the building. It was perhaps then that the first signs of the government taking a lackadaisical attitude to the case became visible.
If the government is really serious in seeing that justice is done in the case, then it should direct its departments to permit the prosecution of its officers and engineers. How much longer must the survivors of the tragedy wait to see that those responsible for the deaths of their loved ones face the courts?
