Death count 26, arrests 4

Two of the IVRCL executives, who
were arrested on Friday, at the
Bankshall Court complex .
(Bishwarup Dutta)

TT Calcutta, April 2: Police arrested one more IVRCL executive today even as three bodies were pulled out of the Vivekananda Road flyover rubble, taking the death toll to 26.

Tanmoy Seal, assistant general manager (projects), was picked up from Burdwan in the morning and slapped with a murder charge.

A police officer said Seal, 48, has been with IVRCL - the company that was awarded the contract by CMDA to build the flyover - since 2006 and was associated with this project from July 2009.

Seal, with an engineering diploma, has worked on six flyovers across the country, including one in Goa and another in Jamshedpur, the officer said. He will be produced in court tomorrow.

M. Mallickarjun, senior assistant general manager, Pradip Kumar Saha, a manager, and Debajyoti Majumdar, assistant manager (administration) - arrested yesterday on murder charges - were produced in Bankshall Court court today.

They have been sent to police custody till April 11.

A case under IPC sections of murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and mischief has been started against IVRCL.

Cops have sealed the company's plant near Ruby Hospital where the mixture was prepared to concretise a portion of the flyover on Wednesday.

Another officer said Ranjit Bhattacharjee, the company's associate vice-president and regional head, was also under the scanner.

The police claimed they were looking into the role of CMDA, the implementing agency for the flyover project.

Two suspended CMDA engineers - Priyotosh Bhattacharyya, the chief engineer of CMDA's area development department, and Santanu Mondal, the executive engineer of the department - were interrogated at Lalbazar today.

Cops also summoned the department's superintending engineer Subhankar Bhattacharya to Lalbazar for questioning.

"We are trying to determine the exact role of CMDA in the flyover's construction," said Debashis Boral, joint commissioner (crime).

A police team from Calcutta visited IVRCL's headquarters in Hyderabad today to issue a notice to the board of directors, asking them to appear before the cops in Calcutta.

Engineers from CMDA and Rail Vikas Nigam Limited inspected the site today. "The challenge now is to safely pull down the portion of the flyover that is hanging precariously," a CMDA engineer said.

He said 2,000 concrete blocks and about 1.2 lakh sacks of sand would be needed to prevent the structure from collapsing.

Abdul Rezzak - the cleaner of the truck which has been stuck under the flyover - was among those found today. The lifeless body of Rezzak, 25, had been lying inside the truck's cabin since the collapse.

In the afternoon, the police threw open Rabindra Sarani to motorists.

In an attempt to prevent onlookers from crowding the area, rescue workers covered the mangled portion of the flyover with a large piece of cloth.

In the evening, men from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) used victim location cameras to find if anyone else was trapped in the rubble.

Such cameras were widely used during the Nepal earthquake rescue operation last year, an NDRF official said.

The waterproof camera head with LED lights can pinpoint a victim's location, he said. And a two-way audio system allows rescuers to communicate with victims. "But the cameras did not locate anyone trapped under the debris," he said.