Gujarat HC orders Oreva Group to pay Rs 10 lakh compensation to kin of Morbi bridge collapse victims

Oreva Group was responsible for operation and maintenance of the British-era bridge that collapsed last year, killing 135 people

The Gujarat High Court on Wednesday ordered clock-making firm Oreva Group to pay Rs 10 lakh as interim compensation to each family of 135 victims, who were killed in the Morbi suspension bridge collapse, and Rs 2 lakh to 56 individuals who sustained injuries. The amount is in addition to Rs 10 lakh already paid by the state government.

Oreva Group's managing director Jaysukh Patel through his lawyer had offered to pay Rs 5 lakh to the families of deceased and Rs 1 lakh to those injured. However, the division bench led by chief justice Sonia Gokani were not satisfied with the offer. Citing several judgements including in Bhopal Gas Leak and Uphar Cinema tragedies, the court said that even in terms of interim relief the ratio between state and the private party should be 45 per cent and 55 per cent, respectively as held in those cases by the Supreme Court.

The bench said that since the state government had already paid Rs 10 lakh to deceased families and Rs 1 lakh to injured ones, the private firm, Oreva, needed to pay 50 per cent of total compensation even as part of interim arrangements as per the guidelines laid down by the apex court. The final compensation will be decided at a later stage.

Read | Corroded wires, welded suspenders behind Morbi bridge tragedy: SIT in preliminary probe report

Earlier on Tuesday, senior lawyer Nirupam Nanavaty representing Jaysukh Patel had offered to pay altogether Rs 5 crore to the victims and injured ones, which came to be about Rs 3.5 lakh for the next kin of 135 deceased persons and Rs 50,000 to 56 injured persons.

Expressing its displeasure, the division bench had said that the offer was too meagre and asked to take further instruction from Patel, who is in judicial custody. Nanavaty had told the court that since Patel was in jail, the company was being managed by its women directors who may have difficulty in arranging funds. On Wednesday, Nanavaty said that his client, Patel, offered to pay Rs 5 lakh and Rs 1 lakh, respectively to the families of those deceased and injured.

While passing the order to increase the compensation, chief justice Gokani directed the state and Morbi legal cells to make the respondent (Jaysukh Patel) available for distributing the amount. She said that the company should disburse half of the amount in next two weeks while the rest of the amount in four weeks.

Jaysukh Patel is in jail under judicial custody who is facing charges under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 114 (abetment) of Indian Penal Code along with eight other accused. He was arrested only after his surrender before the sessions court in Morbi on January 31, days after an arrest warrant was issued against him.

On October 30, the suspension bridge over Machhu river collapsed, killing 135 people. Investigation revealed that the Oreva Group, part of famous clock-making firm Ajanta Manufacturing Limited, was responsible for operation and maintenance of the British-era bridge. Investigation found that faulty repair was carried out without consulting competent technical experts, no security to control crowds was in place, there was no restriction on the number of persons accessing the bridge.

The probe found that testing of the main cable and vertical suspenders was not carried out before commencement of repair work. 22 of the 49 cables were found to be corroded, indicating that those wires could have already broken before the incident. It was found that Oreva Group outsourced the repair works to a non-competent agency and opened the bridge for the public without informing the local authority.