NEW DELHI: A local court on Wednesday denied bail to four co-owners of a coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar in whose flooded basement three civil services aspirants drowned and the SUV car driver accused of driving recklessly and creating water waves on the flooded street outside the institute.
The co-owners are identified as Tejinder Singh, Parvinder Singh, Harvinder Singh, and Sarabjeet Singh, while the driver as Manuj Kathuria. The three IAS aspirants—Shreya Yadav of Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, Tanya Soni from Telangana, and Navin Dalwin from Kerala—couldn’t escape from the library in the basement of RAU’s IAS coaching institute building and drowned.
“All the bail applications are dismissed,” Judicial Magistrate Vinod Kumar stated.
Kathuria faces accusations of driving his Force Gurkha through a heavily flooded street, which allegedly caused the water to surge and breach the gates of the three-storey building, ultimately flooding the basement. The four co-owners are charged with abetting the incident by neglecting necessary safety measures in the flood-prone area.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Rakesh Malhotra, Kathuria’s advocate, told the court that his client did not know what would happen, nor did he have the intention to cause the incident.
“It is very difficult to drive in a waterlogged area’ What is the cause of the unfortunate incident? One, running a library in the place marked as something else... and two, the failure of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Delhi Jal Board etc. to prevent waterlogging,” the advocate said.
However, Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Srivastava stated that Kathuria was not guilty of “contributory negligence,” but he “aggravated” the incident.
Advocate Amit Chadha, representing the basement owners, said the concept of a library of a coaching institute was different from the libraries in courts and other places where books are stacked with designated reading places.
“It is merely a library to utilise the time between classes. It is not being misused for any other purpose,” he said.
APP Srivastava, however, said that the co-owners had abetted the offence.
Everyone is trying to throw the responsibility on others ‘You have abetted this thing,” he said.
The charges
The SUV driver has been accused of driving his car through the street that was flooded by rainwater, causing the water to swell and breach the gates of the three-storey building and inundate the basement. The four co-owners have been charged with abetting the offences. All were arrested on Monday.