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The five-year-old girl was killed when a compound wall collapsed during the operation of an earthmover for underground pipeline installation during the heavy rainy season
The Madras High Court recently quashed the complaints filed against the Managing Director of a private construction company in a five-year-old girl's death case on technical grounds.
The bench of Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan held that the criminal prosecution initiated under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act of 1996 was unsustainable because the complaints were time-barred.
Court noted that the law mandated filing such complaints within three months of the incident before the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), whereas, in the case at hand, the complaint had been filed with a delay of one day.
Moreover, the judge emphasized that prosecuting the Managing Director or other directors without including the company as an accused was not legally sustainable. Therefore, court quashed the complaints filed against Rajiv Mittal of VA Tech Wabag Ltd.
The incident occurred as part of a project undertaken by the company in collaboration with IDE Technologies Ltd., securing a contract from the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) to construct a tertiary treatment reverse osmosis plant with a capacity to treat 45 million liters daily at Koyambedu.
The petitioner's company engaged sub-contractors to lay underground pipeline to transmit treated sewerage water from Koyambedu to various industries at the site of Kundrathur Porur main road.
However, while doing so, on August 18, 2019, when the city was experiencing heavy rains, an earthmover was deployed to lay underground pipelines. There was a four-foot-high wall situated near the excavation.
When the operator of the earthmover filled the trench after the pipes were laid, the wall situated near the pipeline collapsed and fell over the temporary shelter raised in the pavement. Due to this, the victim girl child was stuck under collapsed debris and succumbed to death.
Her parents, fortunately, escaped with injuries. Subsequently, the police arrested the earthmover operator and two others on charges of causing death by negligence.
Following the incident, a complaint was filed under the 1996 Act against the MD of the private company, citing the employer's responsibility to implement safety measures and ensure continuous and adequate supervision of construction work to prevent accidents.
Case Title: Rajiv Mittal v. The State
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