RANA PLAZA TRAGEDY, Murder charges against 41

After a long delay due to bureaucratic knots, the Criminal Investigation Department on Monday submitted the charge sheet to the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Dhaka accusing 41 people, including government officials, elected representatives and Awami League leaders, of ‘killing’ an estimated 1,137 people in the Rana Plaza building collapse in Savar two years ago.
‘The accused had deliberately thrown the workers into the death trap…We have only indentified the perpetrators involved in the deadly building collapse in some way or other,’ the CID’s senior assistant superintendent Bijoy Krishna Kar, also the case investigator, told New Age.
The investigator, also sought warrants for the arrest of 21 accused, including Savar municipality chief executive officer Uttam Kumar Roy and other government officials, and a factory owner Jannatul Ferdous, while dropped eight people, including the lone foreign owner and managing director Mayor David Rico of Phantom TAC from the charge.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Dhaka will hear the charges on June 28 and will check whether further investigation is required before commencing the trial.
The CID also submitted another charge sheet under Building Construction Act 1952 accusing 18 people – 17 from among the 41 named in the murder case and one Mahbub Alam – for violating the construction rules that led to the collapse of the building.
The investigators so far arrested 22 people, including the building owner Sohel Rana, government engineers, local political leaders, and top executives of the factories the building had housed.
All but two of the 22 people arrested were granted bail by the High Court, the investigator said.
The two people who were in jail included Sohel Rana.
‘Trials must be completed to set examples for other factory owners otherwise such tragedies will strike again and the factory owners will go unpunished,’ said 20-year-old Rehana Khatun,
a sewing operator of New Wave Styles factory which Rana Plaza had housed.
On the morning of April 24, 2013, the eight-storey Rana Plaza, which had housed five clothing factories, a shopping mall and a bank, came crashing down, leaving at least 1,137 people dead and about 2,000 injured and maimed. Several dozen workers are still missing.
After the disaster, the police filed a case against the building owner, Sohel Rana, and the owners of the five clothing factories housed in the building under Section 337, 338, 427, 304 (b) and 34 of the Penal Code.
Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha filed another case against the Savar municipality under Section 12 of Building Construction Act 1952.
The CID investigated both the cases. In addition, the family of a victim also filed a murder case with a Dhaka court.
The court, however, asked the CID to investigate the victim family’s case together with the one filed by the police immediately after the incident.
Two years and one month after the incident, the CID submitted a 45-page charge sheet with 3,362 pages of related documents in the murder case while a 16-page charge sheet in another case.
The investigator named building owner and landlord Sohel Rana and his parents, Abdul Kahleque and Marzina Begum, New Wave Bottoms and New Wave Styles chairman Bazlus Samad Adnan, New Wave Bottoms managing director Mahmudur Rahman Taposh, Phantom TAC and Phantom Apparels official Aminul Islam and Ethertex chairman Anisur Rahman and its managing director Jannatul Ferdous in the charge sheet for murder.
Twelve government officials and elected representatives, including RAJUK’s building inspector Awlad Hossain, joint labour director Jamshedur Rahman who retired on April 28, 2015, the then deputy chief factory inspector Belayet Hossain who was given forced retirement in 2015, inspectors (engineering) Yusuf Ali and Shahidul Islam, were also named for their irresponsibility.
The CID also found the then Savar municipal mayor Refayetullah, who was linked to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, councillor Muhammad Ali Khan, and the municipality’s then chief executive officer Uttam Kumar Roy, to have been responsible for the tragedy.
After the investigation, the police brought charges against 41 people, including the prime accused Sohel Rana under Sections 302, 325, 326, 337, 338, 427, 465, 471, 109, and 34 for crimes they had committed before and during the incident.
The CID investigator, Bijoy, blamed bureaucratic tangle for the delay in submitting the charge sheet.
The CID officials said the investigators had sought permission from the respective government offices to name 13 officials, including the then Savar upazila nirbahi officer, Kabir Hossain Sardar, in the charges.
Public administration ministry’s senior assistant secretary Shahnaz Yesmin Lilly in a letter on December 23, 2014 informed the CID that they would not give permission to press charge against the then Savar UNO, Kabir Hossain Sardar, while RAJUK in a separate letter on December 11, 2014 refused permission for action against its building inspector Awlad Hossain.
The labour ministry also refused permission for pressing charges against four of it officials –Jamshedur, Belayet, Yusuf Ali and Shahidul Islam.
The government, eventually, gave permission for action against seven, including Refayetullah, Muhammad Ali Khan and Uttam Kumar Roy.
The CID investigators, however, included the RAJUK and labour ministry officials in the charge sheet, leaving their final inclusion to the court’s discretion.
On the role of the then UNO Kabir, the CID investigators found that he had visited the building a day before it collapsed after the workers refused to enter the building.
The UNO allowed the factory owners to run the units even after cracks were spotted on the building.
The investigators, however, dropped the then Savar UNO, Kabir Hossain Sardar, from the charge sheet as an accused.
The CID investigators detected a number of forgeries committed by Sohel Rana, also a Juba League leader in Savar, to get a Tk 5 crore loan from Jamuna Bank and to secure the permission to build the Rana Plaza.
The CID has recorded statements of more than 1,200 people, including government officials, witnesses, victims and experts from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, and executives from Bangladesh Garment Manufactures and Exporters’ Association.
Besides, the investigators collected TV footages, newspaper clippings and expert opinions as evidence. Some 594 people were named as prosecution witnesses.
In the case filed by RAJUK, the CID found negligence by 18 people, including the building owner, factory owners and the officials concerned. The investigator sought arrest warrant against eight accused while named 135 as prosecution witnesses.
He also dropped two – executive engineer Entemam Hossain and assistant engineer Alam Mia –from the charges since they had joined the government service before the forged architectural document was signed in 2008.
At least 29 global brands used to place orders with at least one of the five garment factories in the Rana Plaza building, according to Clean Clothes Campaign.
The factories worked for companies including, Primark, Mango, Benetton, Bonmarché, C&A Foundation, Camaïeu, El Corte Inglés, Inditex, KiK, Loblaw, LPP S.A., Mascot, Premier Clothing, Walmart and The Children’s Place through BRAC USA.
Many of the brands, meanwhile, compensated the affected workers and families of some deceased.

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