Pune: The Bharati Vidyapeeth police on Tuesday registered a case of negligence against the manager of a construction site in Katraj in connection with a worker's fatal fall into a lift duct from the sixth floor on the afternoon of Sept 9. The police identified the deceased worker as Ramu Rathod (40), a resident of Katraj. Initially, the police had registered an accidental death case.
Subsequent investigation revealed that the site manager did not ensure adequate safety measures , such as properly closing or barricading the lift duct, while the workers were carrying out their work at the under-construction site. The site manager did not provide a helmet and safety harness to the worker. "After studying the circumstances at the construction site, we registered the case," said senior inspector D S Patil of the Bharati Vidyapeeth police.
Extortion bid arrest The president of a workers' organisation was arrested on the charge of threatening and attempting to extort Rs1.5 lakh from the site in-charge on the pretext of not staging a protest against the builder at the police commissioner's office and not pressing for registration of a negligence case. "The arrested man claimed that he ran an NGO for workers.
He took Rs20,000 ‘advance' from the site in-charge as a part of the extortion bid," Patil said. "The man repeatedly visited the construction site and the police station on a few occasions in the past few days. He did not lodge any complaint and kept on threatening the site in-c.