Flyover tragedy: 4 more senior officials of IVRCL arrested

Four more senior officials of the construction company IVRCL were arrested on Monday in connection with the Vivekananda Flyover tragedy in which 26 people were killed and several were left injured.

With Monday’s arrests, a total eight officials of the company has been arrested so far since Friday.

Police said Gopal Krishnamurti, director (operation), SK Ratnam, DGM (operation) and two site engineers Shyamal Manna and Bidyut Manna were arrested on Monday night.

Investigating officers questioned all four of them at the city police’s headquarters at Lalbazar since the afternoon. They were arrested after the police found discrepancies in their statement during the marathon interrogation.

They will be produced before the Bankshall Court on Tuesday, a senior police officer said.

The city police had first arrested the officials of the company those were only responsible for this particular project. All the four officials Mallika Arjun, Senior Assistant General manager, Pradip Kumar Saha, Manager (Structural), Debojyoti Majumder, Assistant manager (Administration) and engineer Tanmoy Shil are at present in the custody of the police.

All four were questioned in the last two days and the police have come to know about different aspects of the company that include procurement details and information about the work that was completed in the recent past. Police on Monday interrogated Krishnamurti, Ratnam and the two site engineers based on the information that they had got from the four officials those were arrested earlier. The team comprising of officers of the Kolkata police that went to Hyderabad returned on Monday morning and subsequently the two top officials of the company were questioned.

Meanwhile, normalcy is gradually getting restored near the site where all the shops and offices were closed since the incident had taken place on Thursday. Shops on Rabindra Sarani were found open. When asked, Suman Agarwal, owner of a mobile shop, said that they have incurred a huge loss in the past four days. So they have decided to open their shops on Monday. Moreover, lighter vehicles started operating on Rabindra Sarani and people were also allowed to pass through the place.

But owners of the shops on KK Tagore Street on which a collapsed part of the flyover is still hanging have found themselves in a helpless situation. It is not possible for the shop owners to start their business until and unless the part is removed. “The concerned agencies are trying their level best to remove the hanging part as early as possible and the issue is such that we cannot even pressurise anyone to take some immediate steps,” said another businessman Manoj Sharma.