A former journalist has approached the Bombay High Court seeking registration of FIR against the state government officials over the sudden collapse of statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Malvan in Sindhudurg district on August 26. The statue was unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2023. The 40- feet status was made of iron.
The PIL filed by Ketan Tirodkar seeks registration of FIR against engineers of the Public Works Department (PWD) of the Malvan Division.
The plea claims that the state as a whole is responsible for the international shame brought to the country by the crashing of the status within seven months of being constructed.
After the statue collapsed, the Assistant Engineer of the PWD registered an FIR against the statue’s designer and structural consultant, leaving out his own self and his colleagues as also the naval engineers who had erected the statue. It alleges that the state is trying to shield its engineers who built the statue.
The statue was completed in a short period of seven months ranging from June 2023 to November 2023 without taking into account the wind-speed which is beyond 45 kms per hour having salty ingredients capable of causing rust to the metal used in the erection of the statue which it did cause, the plea said.
Shivaji Maharaj Statue Collapse: Engineer Named In FIR Claims, ‘I Only Worked On Platform’
It added that the locals had noticed the rusted nuts & bolts used in the statue and had reported it to the PWD in the first half of August. “PWD wrote two emails to the designer agency & to the structural consultant and went standstill over the issue shrugging off its responsibility,” the petition claimed.
The PIL will come up fir hearing in due course of time.
