Kolkata: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today met the injured people and the families of the victims of the March 31 flyover collapse incident that took place in city's Girish Park area.
After meeting with the injured at the Kolkata Medical College, Rahul described it as a great tragedy and urged the people to provide necessary support to them.
"There has been a tragedy here. I wanted to come here and give my support to the people who are injured. One must give support what we can. I came here to visit the injured people. I don't want to make any political statement," he said.
He also visited the incident site where the under-construction building collapsed killing over 20 people.
Rahul, accompanied by state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury and party leader Deepa Dasmunsi, earlier talked to NDRF officials at the accident site.
Yesterday, police arrested three employees of IVRCL, the company building the flyover. The state government also suspended two senior engineers of the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority which was IVRCL's joint venture partner in the project.
The military and NDRF teams, which were rushed to carry out relief and rescue efforts, used heavy earth movers and gas cutting paraphernalia to complete the operation. The rescue operations were completed yesterday.
The police have registered a case of murder and attempt to murder against IVRCL following the flyover collapse.
The state government had earlier announced an ex-gratia compensation of Rs 5 lakh to next of kin of the victims and Rs 2 lakh to gravely injured people. The Hyderabad-based construction company, however, said that the unfortunate incident was an accident and maintained that it was beyond anyone’s control.
The bridge has been under construction since 2009. The company was given an 18-month deadline and a budget of nearly Rs 165 crore to complete the project but after seven years, only about 60 percent of the work has been done. Apart from this flyover, IVRCL got 27 projects across India the same year. Last year, it posted a loss of 672 crore and recently, a consortium of banks took over.
