Kolkata Municipal Corporation engineers have threatened to stop work from Monday after the arrest of a sub-assistant engineer in connection with the Taratala warehouse collapse that killed 16 people, turning the investigation into an immediate disruption risk for the civic body’s building department.
The Special Investigation Team arrested Aminur Sheikh, the sub-assistant engineer attached to Ward 80, on Friday night. He was produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court in Alipore on Saturday and remanded to police custody until 16 September, according to the report.
The warehouse under construction collapsed in Taratala on 24 June, killing 16 people. Police initially arrested two people and began an investigation before a Special Investigation Team was formed to examine the incident.
Following Sheikh’s arrest, sub-assistant engineers from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s building department gathered at the civic headquarters on Saturday afternoon. They demonstrated outside the office of Ujjal Sarkar, the Director General of the Building Department, demanding Sheikh’s immediate release and asserting that he had no connection with the warehouse collapse.
The protesting engineers alleged that Sheikh had been framed. They waited for Sarkar to meet them, but he was not present in his office during the demonstration. After the prolonged wait, the engineers put up posters calling for his resignation on the office wall.
The dispute has now moved beyond the arrest itself to the functioning of the municipal building department. The engineers said they would stop all work from Monday until Sheikh receives bail. They also announced that the protest would continue through repeated work stoppages and sit-ins.
Later on Saturday afternoon, an engineer holding a deputy-level position met the protesters in an effort to reassure them. The report did not specify whether the meeting produced an agreement or whether the threatened work stoppage was withdrawn.
The building department performs functions connected to the civic administration of construction and building activity within Kolkata. A prolonged halt by its engineers could affect routine departmental work, although the source report does not identify specific projects, approvals or services that would be delayed.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s Director General of the Building Department did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment. He also did not reply to a message sent for the report.
The Special Investigation Team’s inquiry remains under way, with Sheikh’s police custody scheduled to continue until 16 September. The engineers’ proposed work stoppage and the administration’s response are expected to determine whether the dispute develops into a wider disruption of municipal building department operations.
