Chargesheet filed against 22 over Hatkeshwar flyover fiasco

Ahmedabad: Four months after Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) lodged a criminal complaint over the shoddy construction of the Hatkeshwar flyover, city police filed a chargesheet against 22 people, of whom 10 are absconding. In the chargesheet filed in a metropolitan court, police cited more than 65 witnesses. Among the accused are the directors of Ajay Engineering Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, which constructed the bridge, and the office-bearers of SGS India Pvt Ltd, which was tasked with supervising the flyover’s construction along with AMC employees. They have been accused of conspiring to get more financial benefits by not maintaining quality, thus breaching the work order and tender conditions, and of deliberately neglecting quality which resulted in a loss of Rs 44 crore to the exchequer. Police invoked charges of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy against the accused under Sections 406, 409, 420 and 120 (B) of the IPC.Those named in the chargesheet include four directors of Ajay Engineering, Rameshbhai Patel and his sons, Chirag and Kalpesh, and Rasik Patel; SGS’s project engineer Neelam Patel, coordinators Pravin Desai and Bhailal Pandya; and AMC employees Satish Patel and Atul Patel. The chargesheet cites survey reports from different institutes to claim that low quality construction material was used. It runs into more than 2,000 pages and describes in detail the roles played by the accused and how their work resulted in poor construction quality that rendered the flyover useless in a short time. The project was commissioned in April 2015. The flyover was built in November 2017 and the completion certificate was issued in May 2018. It was opened to the public but had to be closed earlier this year.