KARACHI, Aug 31 Despite the passage of exactly one year, the culprits behind the Shershah bridge collapse remain unpunished.

The tragic incident on Sept 1, 2007 had resulted in the deaths of some half a dozen people and brought to a halt the Northern Bypass project costing more than Rs3.5 billion. Unfortuna-tely, the government has failed to initiate any action against the people — apparently the builders and the relevant officials — behind the collapse.

Observers may recall that a six-member experts committee was constituted on the directives of the then president Pervez Musharraf and the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, to probe into the matter and to fix responsibility. However, when Dawn contacted the authorities in Islamabad to obtain information about the outcome of the inquiry, they preferred not to respond to any queries in this regard.

A senior official at the federal ministry of communications said that he, like many of his other colleagues, was very much aware of the people responsible for the collapse but due to their influence within the power corridors, no action had so far been taken against them.

“But the findings of the report and the action to be taken against the people and organisations responsible for the collapse are still under consideration. The government will decide whether or not to make the report public,” he told Dawn, refusing to elaborate on the government's intentions.

He said that the inquiry report put most of the blame on a private consultant who had finalised a faulty, geometrically inaccurate design for the structure. The official, however, could offer no justification for the delay in penalising the consultant.

Some half a dozen people were killed when the 70-metre Baldia loop of the bridge collapsed a mere 20 days after having been inaugurated by President Pervez Musharraf. A few hours after the incident, certain officials of the National Highway Authority (NHA), which supervised and executed the entire project, were suspended. It is worth mentioning that the authorities had claimed that those found responsible would be made to pay the cost of re-building the bridge and would have to face charges of criminal negligence, but so far no action of this kind has been taken.

In July 2008, these claims proved to be mere eyewash when, without penalising anyone for criminal negligence, the government approved a contract worth Rs274 million for the reconstruction of the structure. Apart from the government's failure in identifying and charging the culprits, the authorities' promise to compensate the families of the six persons killed under the debris of the collapsed bridge, has yet to materialize.

Compensation issues

“We got half a million rupees from the NHA with a promise that at some later stage, they would also start bearing monthly expenses of the family of my younger brother, who died in the incident,” recalled Kazim Rajia, elder brother of 30-year-old Rizwan Rajia, whose car came under the collapsed structure of the Shershah bridge while on his way to his workplace.

“We are members of a respected family so after their promise we didn't ask them again, neither did they turn up with any package for Rizwan's widow and four children.”

As the authorities remain tight-lipped over the question raised by the deceased Rajia's family, who was killed apparently due to criminal negligence, members of the legal fraternity are preparing to approach the judiciary.

“The government cannot claim any kind of confidentiality and secrecy in the matter of such public inquiries wherein colossal loss was caused to human lives and the properties of the citizens are involved. The outcome of the inquiry report may help devise an effective strategy for safety in future,” said Nasir Maqsood Advocate, a Supreme Court lawyer.

Mr Maqsood, a renowned liability lawyer, who has won compensation for several affected families in different cases of criminal negligence, plans to take up the Shershah bridge tragedy with the high court to make its inquiry report public and compensate the aggrieved families.

“Courts can be approached for calling upon the federal government and the NHA to submit the inquiry report, with material and potential evidence to establish the guilt and negligence involved in such a collapse,” he added.

He said it was not necessary that only the victims and their legal heirs could approach the court, as any common citizen or a taxpayer could draw the attention of the judiciary towards the matter for making the inquiry report public.