Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Thursday expressed displeasure on the investigation underway into the Rajkot game zone fire that killed 27 persons last month, and ordered a 'fact finding inquiry' to find out how the illegal structure came up and what was the role of officials. Expressing anguish over several senior officials attending the inaugural ceremony of TRP Game Zone, which was gutted on May 25, the High Court said a departmental inquiry to fix accountability of officials will be ordered once the fact finding committee submits its report.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Pranav Trivedi was hearing a PIL it had taken up on May 26. The CJ asked the state government to constitute a fact finding committee under the Principal Secretary of Urban Development and Urban Housing Department by Monday. It asked the state government to submit the report by July 4.
Simultaneously, the bench also asked the principal secretary of the state Education Department to constitute teams to carry out fire safety inspections of all categories of schools, including pre-schools, in the state and finish the task in one month. During the hearing, senior advocate Amit Panchal, whose civil application about fire safety has been clubbed with this suo motu PIL, informed the bench that the then Superintendent of Police of Rajkot, district collector, municipal commissioner of Rajkot and District Development Officer had attended the inaugural ceremony of TRP Game Zone.
Though Advocate General Kamal Trivedi informed the bench that the state government has already appointed a Special Investigation Team and its line of probe was similar to what the bench was expecting, the chief justice said the government was only catching lower rank officials and letting go "big fish". "We are not into the SIT report. There has to be a disciplinary inquiry and a fact finding probe to find out who was at fault from the day it (game zone construction) started till it was completed and occupied. Top officials had attended events at the game zone. You only suspended lower rank officials. Top officials have to go," said CJ Agarwal.
