KARACHI: Despite passing 15 years to the collapse of a major portion of the Shershah bridge, multiple probes initiated by the police, communication ministry as well as the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have failed to yield any positive result and provide justice to the families of six persons who were killed in the incident on Sept 1, 2007.

While a manslaughter case was registered on April 7, 2010 on the directives of the Supreme Court in which the accused were acquitted by a sessions court in 2012, another FIR was lodged by the FIA in April this year against a former chairman of the National Highway Authority (NHA), a director of a textile mill and three others pertaining to the collapse of Shershah Bridge.However, despite registration of the FIR, the FIA Agency has so far failed to take action against any of the nominated suspects.

Sources linked the registration of the case and then the stalled investigations with the political developments in the country that saw the change of the government and leadership at various law enforcement agencies.

A senior FIA official, who is familiar with the case, told Dawn that the nominated suspects had neither joined investigations nor approached any court for bail before arrest.

FIA makes no arrest despite lodging FIR in April against ex-NHA head, four others

Official papers reviewed by Dawn suggested that an FIR (15/2022) in connection with the 15-year-old incident was lodged against ex-chairman of NHA retired Major General Farrukh Javed, ex-member NHA Raja Nousherwan, ex-project director of the Karachi Northern Bypass Flyover Yousaf Barakzai, Khalid Mirza of ECIL and Naveed Mirza of the Paracha Textile Mill on the complaint of the then chairman of the Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission.

The sources said the case was registered in Karachi but top FIA authorities had transferred the investigation to agency’s Islamabad office on April 29.

The official papers stated the suspects, said to be extremely influential, allegedly allowed construction of the faulty flyover despite timely warning by the experts concerned that the bridge must be demolished and redesigned correctly as inherent faults could not be solved through remedial measures.

The FIA said that ‘faulty design’ of the bridge was made to protect land of the textile mills.

The official papers revealed that the said suspects having “criminal intentions and common objective by means of fraud knowingly/deliberately” soon after realising the inherent fault in the design of KNBP wilfully constructed the defected flyover on the small piece of land of Paracha Textile Mill for its protection.

The FIA mentioned that M/s ECIL Pvt Ltd got prepared a ‘faulty’ design and NHA insisted on construction of the bridge on a small piece of land although more land was required for construction of safe bridge. “Due to faulty design, ill-conceived structure and criminal negligence of the said accused persons, the bridge collapsed.”

The FIA came to the conclusion that the accused persons committed criminal negligence and caused wrongful monetary losses of over Rs427 million to the NHA and corresponding wrongful gain to ECIL and Paracha Textile Mill and their act constituted the commission of offences under section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 109 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 5 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947.

Chronology of the events showed that the bridge was formally inaugurated by then president Gen Pervez Musharraf on Aug 6, 2007, which collapsed within a month i.e. on Sept 1, 2007.

The Supreme Court had taken suo motu notice of the incident in 2010, and directed the Sindh police to register an FIR and also take action against officials responsible for not registering the case immediately at time when the incident took place.

Subsequently, the SITE-B police registered the case on the order of the apex court after a lapse of two years and seven months in April 2010. A final charge sheet was submitted and charges were framed against the accused in the same year.

However, a supplementary charge sheet was submitted by the then DIG-Investigation Iftikhar Husain Tarrar, which placed all the accused in the Column-2 of the charge sheet with blue ink, not sending them for trial. Thus, the accused were acquitted by a court in 2012.

However, in 2015, a three-member SC bench took up this matter on an appeal and noted with deep regret that “despite lapse of almost seven years from the date of collapse of the bridge and almost four years from the date of interim order of this court, nothing has been brought on record to show any legal process that was initiated per direction of this court culminated into its logical conclusion”.

As the apex court did not absolve any of the private respondents or any other person charged with professional incompetence, criminal neglect and or breach of public duty, then chairman PM Inspection Commission Islamabad retired Lt Col Saifuddin Qureshi submitted a complaint before the FIA on June 10, 2016 to initiate an inquiry into the Shershah bridge collapse.

The Corporate Crime Circle of the FIA-Karachi registered the FIR against five persons on April 12, 2022 after conducting a thorough inquiry into the incident.

However, the investigation of the case was transferred from Karachi to Islamabad on April 29.

NED professors’ inquiry

A team of senior professors of the NED University of Engineering and Technology along with other experts had conducted an inquiry on the orders of the then prime minister. The then chairman of Department of Civil Engineering and current Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Sarosh Hashmat Lodi told FIA investigators that they had come to the conclusion that ‘the reason of the physical collapse was indeed an implementation of ill-conceived structural system and design thereof. However, notwithstanding the physical collapse due to faulty structure design, the criminal neglect on the part of NHA in discharging its duties fiducially shall, however, remain the root cause of collapse of the Paracha Chowk Box Girder Bridge, as the NHA ignominiously failed to ensure implementation of the project’, according to the official papers.

No third party opinion sought when defects became apparent

The FIA said the construction of the Shershah bridge started in year 2003 and ‘abnormal behaviour/defects of the bridge’ were observed in year 2006 and the work on the bridge was stopped.

ECIL designing firm visited the site along with company director Khalid Mirza. Subsequently, NHA Islamabad GM Design Asim Amin, and Iqbal-ul-Haq, a hired consultant of the NHA, visited the site as well.

They met with Ms Majida, the design engineer of ECIL, who informed them that the ‘record pertaining to design calculation has been misplaced and not available with them’.

The NHA consultant suggested to ECIL that ‘remedial measures will not likely solve the problem’.

The expert proposed to demolish and redesign the bridge correctly as ‘repairing and rehabilitation measures will waste good money’.

However, despite these warnings and suggestions, the then NHA Chairman, Maj Gen Farrukh Javed chaired a meeting in Karachi on Oct 26, 2006, which was attended by ‘all stakeholders’ and ordered National Logisitics Cell to immediately start ‘the rehabilitation work’ at Shershah Bridge. The FIA papers said that during this meeting, Mr Amin suggested to avail the expertise of Brig Dr Jamil who was serving Engineer-in-Chief Branch GHQ.

The FIA said that the accused Mr Nousherwan instead of approving the note/proposal, wrote ‘NFA’ (No Further Action) on the note sheet.

The FIA in its inquiry regretted that ‘unfortunately no third party opinion was sought and ultimately segment of Shershah Bridge collapsed’.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2022