Court denies bail to Goregaon fire accused

Mumbai: A sessions court has refused to grant bail to two scrap dealers and a supervisor who had taken a contract to clear scrap from Techniplex building in Goregaon (west). A fire had broken out in May 21 on the seventh floor of the building when cables were being removed from the premises without the supervision of any electrician, resulting in death of five workers. There were around 135 labourers working on the site at the time of the incident.

Another nine persons including eight fire-fighters were injured in the incident. The police has arrested all the accused on the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Sessions judge D.D. Khoche rejected the bail applications filed by Nitin Kothari (44), Ramzan Khan (31) and Salim Shamshad alias Shahjan Maniar (34) on the ground that the probe in the case was going on and the police was yet to record statements of some of the persons who were working at the spot.

The judge observed that life of the deceased couldn’t be brought back, but the investigation is in progress. “In such circumstances, if the applicants are released on bail, there will be every possibility of their obstructing the investigation at every stage, trying to tamper with witnesses who may not be sound economically and socially, and this would create difficulty in smooth investigation,” said the judge.