The father of one of the victims in the Bawana fire tragedy has moved a court here for transfer of investigation of the case to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of the Rohini courts, Gagandeep Singh, will take up the application for consideration on February 3.
In his application filed through advocate Rish Pal Singh, Raju, the father of 11-year-old deceased Rita, said no fruitful investigation had been conducted so far as neither the statements of the survivors nor those of their family members have been recorded by the Delhi Police.
The application further said that the police have also not mentioned anywhere that a child had died in the fire and that several other children were working in the factory in hazardous conditions.
Further, as per the Investigating Officer’s report, the accused were running the illegal business for more than two years at different places under the nose of the Bawana police station, which is a few kilometres from the place of the incident, the application said.
Storage of explosive substances in such a large quantity at the factory had posed a grave threat to national security and therefore it is necessary to transfer the investigation to a federal probe agency like the NIA, Anti-Terrorist Squad and Central Bureau of Investigation so that it can investigate the case with inter-State angles without any departmental formalities, the application urged.
Meanwhile, Metropolitan Magistrate Vikram extended the police remand of the main accused in the case, Manoj Jain, for two more days. He had earlier been remanded to five-day police custody.
His co-accused Lalit Goyal is also in police custody. Both the accused will now be produced on January 31.
Seeking the extension of Mr. Jain’s police remand, the Investigating Officer in the case submitted that the accused was not cooperating in investigation as he had not unlocked his phone.
“Considering the submissions by the probe officer, accused is further remanded to police custody for two days,” the Magistrate said.
