Fix accountability for the drownings
High court’s rebuke underscores the farcical probe in the case where scapegoats are being used to shield systemic corruption at highest levels
If the deaths of three civil service aspirants in Delhi by drowning was a tragedy, what has unfolded since has been little short of a farce. The authorities have chosen to ignore mounting evidence of violation of building rules and norms by influential people who run coaching centres in the Capital in spaces no bigger than cubbyholes, cramming as many students as possible into airless boxes for profit. There has been little action against the laxity of oversight agencies and engineers, who allowed such coaching centres to mushroom and expand, and no crackdown against other agencies that didn’t clean the sewers and stormwater drains which allowed sheets of water to pile up and smash through the gates of the coaching centre basement, marooning the three students in the library.
Instead of looking at the governance limbo that ensured that the Old Rajinder Nagar area was again inundated on Wednesday just days after the initial tragedy, the authorities have embarked on a strange mission to pin responsibility on small fry and junior officials. The biggest example of this is the arrest and charging of a man who was driving through the waterlogged area. Though the Delhi high court has now granted him bail, the police saying the man was a reveller who caused waves of water to crash through the gates of the basement made for a sorry spectacle. The high court has now taken note of this “strange” and “shoddy” probe and lambasted the Delhi government for failing to upgrade the city’s infrastructure due to what it termed a “freebies culture”.
On Wednesday, a bench comprising acting chief justice Manmohan and justice Tushar Rao Gedela did not mince words, calling the incident a case of “criminal neglect” and a symptom of “infrastructure breakdown at the larger level”. The bench expressed dismay that while the police had arrested a passerby, they had not acted against or even investigated the role of Municipal Corporation of Delhi officials, whose negligence contributed to the tragedy.
The court is right. The tragedy, the latest in a series of similar mishaps, underlines that Delhi’s infrastructure is crumbling, its governance is hopelessly caught between feuding centres of power, and its monitoring systems, non-existent. These lacunae need serious investigation and long-term fixes, not knee-jerk responses that attempt to shield powerful men and women who did not do their job. It’s the least that Tanya Soni, Shreya Yadav and Nevin Delvin deserve.