It was the site engineer’s negligence that had caused the accident at the Metro Rail construction site in St. Thomas Mount on January 10, an investigation commissioned by Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) has revealed.
Even as police investigation is on, CMRL simultaneously commissioned its own investigation – carried out by its general consultant — into the mishap which claimed a worker’s life and injured three others, following a girder crash.
According to a senior official with CMRL, safety experts with the general consultant have pointed to the engineer’s failure in ensuring the weights on the girder were placed correctly. Consequently, there was an imbalance in the girder, causing it to pitch forward and downward, leading to the fatal accident. The engineer was engaged by Larsen & Toubro (L&T), one of the contractors engaged by CMRL.
On January 10, St. Thomas Mount police had registered a case under section 304 A (causing death by negligence) of the IPC, and arrested site engineers Marudupandian and Sandeep Singh and safety officers Bineeth and Vimal. On Tuesday, however, a senior officer said investigation was still on and that they were yet to ascertain the cause. “This is a peculiar accident and we will take some more time,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Tuesday announced a sum of of Rs. 1 lakh as compensation to the family of Dimple Shah, the worker who died in the accident. He was a migrant labourer from Bihar, engaged by Shelmec, a sub-contractor roped in by L&T.
The other three workers who were injured, Mumtaz Ansari, Nand Paswan and Samir Khan, would receive Rs. 25,000 each from the Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund, according to a press release.
