As the death toll in the Dockyard Road building collapse rose, the BMC, which apart from ensuring that the rescue operations went on full swing throughout the day to extricate its trapped families, lodged a police complaint against Ashokkumar J. Mehta of M/s Mamamiya Developers Pvt Ltd for carrying out structural changes on the ground floor that could have caused the building to collapse. Police officials said that they are in the process of lodging an offence based on the complaint of the BMC.
According to a press statement released by the BMC late on Friday evening, based on the preliminary probe, they had found that there might have been some illegal structural changes on the ground floor of the building. A written complaint to the effect was thus submitted to the Sewri police station against the occupant of the ground floor premises.
Confirming the development, DCP (port zone) Tanaji Ghatge said, “We are in the process of recording the statement of the complainant and after verifying it, we will arrest all the accused named in the complaint.”
Enraged locals, however, passed their verdict by squarely putting the blame on the decorator for the tragedy. “A committee had visited the building to inspect it some months ago. They had also seen the premises of the decorator after which they had put bamboo supports. This indicates that they were aware of the changes and hence took measures to avert any disaster, but it failed and now so many people are dead,” said a woman who claimed to be living in the neighbouring building.