WB: Charge sheet in AMRI fire submitted

Kolkata: The Kolkata Police on Thursday submitted charge sheet against all 16 accused in the AMRI fire in which 90 people died of suffocation on December 9 last year.

The detective department investigating the case submitted a nearly 1200-page charge sheet within 83 days before the acting chief judicial magistrate of Alipore court.

There were 450 witnesses in the case, according to the prosecution.

The court rejected the bail prayer of those in custody and directed three of the accused on bail to be present in court on March 7, when the case would be heard again.

While Moni Chettri and Pranab Dasgupta, the two doctors on the hospital's board, were granted bail by the CJM court, another director RS Agarwal was granted bail by the Calcutta High Court.

Directors RS Goenka, Manish Goenka, Prasant Goenka, Dayanand Agarwal, Ravi Todi and SK Todi were in custody. Four senior officers of the hospital administration were also in custody.

Three directors - Preeti Surekha, Rahul Todi and Aditya Agarwal - absconded and a lookout notice was issued against them.

All of them were accused under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), 285 (dealing with fire or any combustible matter so as to endanger human life) of IPC and sections 11J,

11K and 11L of West Bengal Fire Act.

Counsels for the accused in custody prayed for bail submitting that as investigation was completed and the charge sheet submitted, they should be granted bail.

It was claimed that since three other directors were granted bail and those in custody were on the same footing, they should also be granted bail.

The prosecution opposed the bail prayer and submitted that the families of those who died were waiting for justice and prayed that trial be commenced soon.

The court rejected the bail prayers and directed that case diary and copies of charge sheet be provided to all the accused before the next hearing on March seven.

Ninety people, most of them patients, died at the seven- storied, centrally air-conditioned annexe building of the hospital at Dhakuria in south Kolkata from a fire in the basement.