The Chennai police have arrested two persons in connection with the deaths of 32-year-old Jayaseelan and 21-year-old Naresh, whose bodies were recovered by rescue teams from a 60-foot trench in Velachery. Two persons, Ezhil and Santhosh from Greentech Structural Constructions, were arrested on December 8.
On December 4, two men, R Jayaseelan, who worked as a electrical engineer at Greentech and Naresh, an employee at a petrol pump, fell into a trench at the construction site in Velachery’s Five Furlong Road. The rescue team managed to pull out two bodies only on December 8. Both the bodies have been sent for postmortem. Jayaseelan’s family had alleged that Greentech forced him to come to work despite the heavy rains and cyclonic winds. Greentech was carrying out the construction on behalf of Hinduja Leyland.
The police are on the lookout for two others who have been named as accused in the case. Meanwhile, the Chennai police have altered the FIRs registered in the deaths of Naresh and Jayaseelan from ‘Man Missing’ to section 304(2) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder, where act is done with knowledge knowing it might cause death) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The four accused are Sivakumar (Owner of Greentech Structural Constructions, Anna Nagar), Ezhil (site supervisor, Selaiyur), Santhosh (site supervisor, Krishnagiri) and Manikandan (manager of Pallikaranai).
For the last four days, both their families had been camping by the site, hoping against hope of finding them alive. A relative of Jayaseelan said that he was asked to come to work in the rain at 4:30 am, even as he protested. “Jayseelan said that it was raining heavily and it would be difficult to work, but he was told by a person in Greentech management that there was a pump set that needed to be repaired and that he had to come to work. At 4:30 am, he was made to come to work. After repairing the pump, at around 6:30 am, he spoke to his wife and told her that he was safe, but there was a lot of water,” said Jayaseelan’s relative, whose name is also Jayaseelan.
“He asked her to take care of herself because there was inundation in the house below theirs. After finishing his work, Jayaseelan sat in his cabin, which was in a makeshift container. While he was speaking to his wife, the call got cut, and when she tried calling him 10 minutes later, the number was not reachable. She reached the site with the help of her relative,” he added.
He said the owner of KR Fuels, the petrol bunk where Naresh worked, admitted that Naresh had fallen down the trench while on shift and that he was their responsibility. “He said that they will take care of the family. But nobody from Greentech has come or taken any responsibility for forcing Jayaseelan to come to work. We want action to be taken against the company,” Jayaseelan’s relative said.
Naresh’s father, Shankar, said that the owner of the petrol bunk KR Fuels had assured them of help. “The owner said he would take care of it and that Naresh was like his son. He has promised that he would help when all this ends and asked me not to do anything in the meantime,” Shankar told TNM.
Meanwhile, officials from Greentech who were responsible for the construction at Velachery’s Five Furlong Road are all inaccessible to questions from the media. Jayaseelan’s family too have accused them of having turned off their phones to escape responsibility for the incident.
TNM visited the office of Greentech Structural Constructions in Chennai’s Anna Nagar and found the office locked.
R Geetha, advisor of the Unorganised Workers’ Federation questioned whether appropriate permissions were taken before deploying people at the construction site. “What safety measures were provided for the workers at this site? They say they had dug 40 feet and it increased to 60-70 feet because of the rain. Did they conduct a soil test to dig that? This is a big building, so did they have the required permissions for all this? Action must be taken against all those responsible for the tragedy. Otherwise, incidents like this will repeat,” Geetha said.