In the middle of the night, shortly after 12.30 am on Monday, the pillars of a huge elevated municipal water storage tank, which was being used to supply water to the ill-fated Sai Baba Nagar and the adjoining Sector E6 of the posh Arera Colony here, broke and the whole structure came crumbling down with a huge blast crushing to death 7 persons and critically wounding at least 35 others.
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has expressed shock and grief and announced ex-gratia relief of `1 lakh to the kin of each of those killed in this incident. He has also announced a relief of `50,000 to each of those critically wounded and `25,000 to those with minor injuries. Bhopal district collector Nikunj Shrivastava has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. More than two dozen homes were smashed to the ground and many more were flooded in the incident.
The storage capacity of the water tank, built more than 20 years ago, was about one lakh litres.
When this correspondent met some residents of Sai Baba Nagar, who were engaged in the rescue and clearing operations on Monday morning, they said that the municipal authorities had been informed on a couple of occasions over the last one year that the tank structure had started tilting to one side.
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Sibal: IT Act must not be used to throttle dissent
New Delhi, Nov. 19: Communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal on Monday said he was “deeply saddened” by the arrest of two girls over their Facebook post questioning the shutdown in the city for Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray’s funeral and said the IT Act should not be used to “throttle dissent”. He also stressed the need for educating enforcement authorities on the sections of the Information Technology Act to prevent “misuse” of the Act. “I am deeply saddened (by the arrest of the two girls). It is just their point of view and enforcement of these laws are not to ban people from expressing their views,” he told a television channel.
He said sending people booked under Section 66(A) to judicial custody is not in accordance with the law and suggested that it could be “illegal”. Mr Sibal said the law itself says it is a non-bailable offence and if a person is arrested under it, he should be given bail immediately. — PTI