Morbi court rejects Oreva CMD Jaysukh’s bail plea

Rajkot: The Morbi sessions court on Saturday rejected the regular bail plea of Oreva chairman and managing director (CMD) Jaysukh Patel, one of the prime accused in the Morbi bridge collapse case.
The Oreva Group was responsible for the maintenance and management of the bridge. The British-era suspension bridge collapsed on October 30 last year killing 135 people and injuring several others.
Patel is one of the 10 accused arrested in the case.
Patel had applied for regular bail after the police filed a chargesheet against him. He stated in his bail plea that he had no role directly or indirectly in the bridge collapse. He through his lawyers argued before the court that the reopening of the bridge after the renovation was not a secret kept from the municipality. Objecting to Section 304 of the IPC invoked against him by the police, Patel said that he never intended the bridge to collapse.
Patel’s lawyers also contended that as a public-spirited citizen, their client had undertaken the task of maintaining his city’s heritage site.
Objecting to Patel’s bail plea, special public prosecutor S K Vora submitted that the defence lawyers cleverly missed illegalities to escape criminal liability, while Patel has already admitted his civil liability before the Gujarat high court.
Vora asserted that the collapse of the bridge itself was the foundation for invoking Section 304 of IPC. He questioned, “If the company was maintaining the bridge since 2008, why did it have to close it down in 2021. What kind of repairs were going on for 14 years?”
The prosecution further stated that it was the company’s responsibility to ensure that the cables were in proper condition and ensure the bridge did not collapse. The report showed that out of 84 wires in the cable, 41 were already broken. This happened during the time when the company was maintaining the bridge.