Unfourtunate incident happened on 14 March 2019 when part of the deck slab of Himalaya foot bridge outside CSMT collapsed killing 6 people and injuring more than 30 people.
In one day, Chief engineer Vigilance from Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai provided the preliminary report. Is CE (Vigilance) competent to prepare such report? Why this CE (Vigilance) did not make this report earlier? Why did he wait till 6 people died?
MCGM suspended some junior officers and started departmental enquiry against some of their officers. Show cause notice was issued to the Structural audit firm Prof. D D Desai’s Asssociated Engineering Consultant and Analysts by MCGM. The question is who is to be blamed for the bridge collapse? It’s a system failure. The Electronic media, print media along with MCGM put the blame on the structural engineer Niraj Desai who audited the bridge and reported that bridge requires minor repairs. As usual, the structural engineer who has given the audit report had been made a scape goat. Police arrested him like a crimical and put him behind bars. FIR has been filed under stringent Sction 304 (II), culpable homicide not amounting to murder which attracts up to 10 years in prison. Any engineer has no intention to kill when he does his work. The humiliation and arrest of a professional without any technical inquiry was not warranged.
Structural audit process of all bridges in MCGM limit was initiated in Oct 2016.
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