“The railway dumped debris behind the old wall which did not give in because the encroachments on the other side of the wall had held the wall back. After these encroachments were removed, the wall had no support and collapsed,” a senior civic official of the corporation’s Roads department said. He added that the JCB dumper driver, against whom Agripada police filed a case was not responsible for the incident.
V Karbare, assistant municipal commissioner of E ward supported the Roads department.
He said, “There is a rule that whoever owns the property and has lined it with a boundary is responsible for the wall as it is in their ownership. This is the railway’s wall and they will have to look into issues related to compensation. We are now investigating the cause of the collapse.”
Central Railway public relations officer A K Singh however denied the charges made by the civic body.
He said, “The wall is not our property. It belongs to the BMC. It is because of their work that the wall had collapsed.”