Owners granted anticipatory bail
With the sessions court granting anticipatory bail to the three accused brothers in the Altaf Manzil collapse case on Monday, complainant advocate Faiz Merchant has said that they will be challenging the order in the Bombay high court. The defense has said that the trio will now file a complaint with the Mahim police.
Sessions judge S.L. Dholakia, while granting the bail, said, “ There is no nexus between the three accused and the collapse of the building.”
According to the prosecution and the complainant, the owners of the building, the Furniturewalas, had failed to repair the dilapidated structure. “The court has just given the operative part of the order. Once the final copy of the order is handed over to us, we will be able to see on what grounds the court granted the anticipatory bail to the three accused,” advocate Merchant told The Asian Age. “We will be challenging the order in the high court,” he added.
Defense counsel R.A. Shaikh said, “We are not the landlords as we had transferred the entire property to the tenants before 2004. We stopped going to the furniture showroom previously owned by us from December 7, 2007.”
Irfan, Sharif and Mohammad Furniturewala, were charged for culpable homicide and negligence following the building’s collapse on June 10 in which 10 people were killed.
Advocate Shaikh added that the Furniturewalas would now file a complaint against building resident Rizwan Merchant with the Mahim police station and consequently an FIR would be lodged based on the recent BMC findings.
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