Malviya Nagar blaze: Delhi HC says will take action, corporation will pay

NEW DELHI: Stressing that time has come to fix not just criminal liability but also “monetory responsibility”, the Delhi high court on Thursday sought details of costs incurred by authorities in controlling the fire at Malviya Nagar that raged for almost 20 hours.
A bench of acting chief justice Gita Mittal and justice C Hari Shankar took suo motu cognisance of media reports and relied on TOI coverage of efforts made to douse it to indicate that such expenses must be borne by negligent officials of municipal corporation and the owner/occupier of the premises where an illegal commercial factory was being run.

“We will take action. You will pay for it,” the bench told senior advocate Sanjay Poddar who appeared on behalf of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation to claim that the civic agency had earlier taken steps.

HC asked Delhi Police commissioner, Delhi Fire Service Chief and the Indian Air Force to give a breakdown of money spent by them in the fire-fighting exercise where 90 fire tenders and hundreds of personnel from fire and police department had to be deployed. The court remained unimpressed with SDMC’s claim it took action, and underlined the “dangerous consequences” of the fire that affected 40-odd properties in the vicinity.

The bench also ordered DCP south to conduct a probe and file a report furnishing the details of the owners of the building that caught fire, who occupied it at that time, the date when it was constructed, when was its commercial use started and if it received any complaint from the SDMC in this regard.

Later on Wednesday, the factory owner, Sanjay Saini was arrested. Police said that he didn't take the required permission from the MCD and there was no safety equipment installed in the warehouse.