This story is from August 5, 2016

Slab got faulty shuttering support, state tells court

An inspection report by the College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) says that the shuttering support given to the 13th floor slab which collapsed at the underconstruction Park Xpress housing project at Balewadi on July 29 was "inadequate and not proper".
Slab got faulty shuttering support, state tells court
Pune: An inspection report by the College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) says that the shuttering support given to the 13th floor slab which collapsed at the underconstruction Park Xpress housing project at Balewadi on July 29 was "inadequate and not proper". Nine labourers were killed and three injured in the incident.
District government pleader Ujjwala Pawar read out the report, which was commissioned by the Pune police, in an open court while arguing against the grant of anticipatory bail to the four developers-cum-partners of the housing project on Thursday.
The report is based on a study of the site by an expert CoEP faculty. Pawar will continue with her arguments before additional sessions judge P Y Ladekar on Friday.
Among other things, the report states that no proper design and drawing plan of the shuttering structure was available at the site and the support was not provided as per the conventional requirement for construction of a slab at a height as much as 140 feet or 40 metres.
Pawar submitted that the wooden/plywood planks and the wooden and steel poles used for providing support from a point barely 20 feet below the slab were inadequate to bear the working load. The shuttering was not done horizontally as well as vertically as required by the conditions of the site, she said.
Pawar said the support structure was inadequate to bear the live load, which included the labourers working on the slab, the vibrations caused by a lift that carried concrete material from the ground to the top floor and the wind factor that prevails at such a height.
Pawar furnished the report in the context of defence lawyer S K Jain's argument on Wednesday that the police had erred in booking the developers for culpable homicide and that the "accident" was, at the most, a case of negligence causing death against the contractor and not the developers.

Culpable homicide is punishable with a life term or minimum 10 years in jail while negligence causing death is punishable with two years. The knowledge about an act likely to cause bodily harm or death is critical to applying the culpable homicide charge. Jain had argued that there was no link between the developers and the actual construction work by the contractor and, hence, the former could not be attributed the knowledge factor. The Bombay high court weighed this aspect while granting bail to the developers in the April 4, 2013 building collapse in Mumbra in which 74 persons were killed, he said.
Pawar argued that it was premature to decide whether the Park Xpress incident was a case of culpable homicide or negligence but said the developers cannot claim lack of knowledge about the construction work when it had been commissioned only after inspection by their engineers. Moreover, the developers in the Mumbra case were granted bail a year-and-a-half after they were arrested and were in jail, a chargesheet was filed and there was time for their case to come for trial, she contended.
Pawar submitted that there was no "legal and valid" sanction from the Pune Municipal Corporation to the commencement of construction of the 13th and 14th floors. "Under the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning (MRTP) Act, submission of plan is held legal and valid only when it is actually submitted for sanction and not presented online for verification. Online facility is merely for the convenience of the developers," she argued. Even the PMC's scrutiny report of July 1, 2016, on the plan that was presented online, had "failed" the plan on different counts, she added.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA