‘Pillar 40 epicentre of disaster’

The experts from the State Forensic Science Laboratory on Friday identified the pillar-40 as the epicentre of the flyover disaster on Thursday that claimed 24 lives and left many injured. A team comprising senior scientists from the forensic laboratory visited the spot on Friday and collected samples from the spot. Chitrakshya Sarkar, senior scientific officer of the laboratory, said after the preliminary examination it seems that the pillar number 40 is the origin from where the damage started and the flyover collapsed. Most are “two-legged” pillars which were erected on two sides of the Vivekananda Road. But pillar number 40 was a single legged one that has come up on the middle of the road. 

Explaining the reason, Sarkar said that the extensions of the flyover on both eastern and western sides of the pillar have collapsed. It shows that there was some sort of “engineering fault.” He said: “We would reconstruct how the incident has taken place using material evidence and photographs. The experts have also asked the police to provide the video footages of the surveillance cameras in which around 100 metre of the flyover was found collapsing.”