Delhi coaching centre deaths: High Court slams authorities over freebies culture

The court was hearing a plea seeking a high-level committee to investigate the deaths of three UPSC aspirants in the basement of a flooded coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar on the evening of July 27. PTI File

The Delhi High Court (HC) on Wednesday pulled up authorities over the deaths of three Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) aspirants who drowned in the basement of a coaching centre and stated that such tragedies are bound to happen when there is no collection of taxes owing to a "freebies culture".

"Your authorities are bankrupt. If you don't have money to pay salaries, how will you upgrade the infrastructure? There is a need to revamp the infrastructure. You want to have freebies culture; you don't want to collect taxes. You are not collecting any money, so you are not spending any money... the tragedy was bound to happen," the bench said.

It also hinted at asking a central agency to probe into the incident and directed the chief of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) commissioner and the deputy commissioner of police as well as the investigating officer of the case to appear before the court on Friday.

The court was hearing a plea seeking a high-level committee to investigate the deaths of the three aspirants - Shreya Yadav, 25, of Uttar Pradesh; Tanya Soni, 25, from Telangana, and Nevin Delvin, 24, from Kerala - in the basement of a flooded coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar on the evening of July 27. It was also hearing another plea related to hundreds of libraries running in basements in the city.

During the hearing, the bench remarked that people hold protests and agitations saying there is no water in Delhi and the city is not receiving its share of water but there are floods the next day.

"You need to see whether you want to have this freebies culture or proper infrastructure. Delhi has a population of 3.3 crore people, whereas it was planned for 6-7 lakh people. How do you plan to accommodate so many people without upgrading the infrastructure? There is malice in the system. Administrators should pay attention to this," the bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela said.

It also pulled up the Delhi Police and said that a "strange probe" in the case. The court was referring to the police action against a passerby who drove a car towards the gate of the coaching class and pointed out that no action was taken against the Delhi civic officials.

"Have they lost it? What is Delhi Police doing? What are its officials doing? This is a cover up or what? Has some official been held accountable for the incident till now? We are telling you, once the responsibility is fixed on officials, no such incident will ever happen in future," the bench said.

The court also highlighted that multi-storey buildings were being allowed to operate but there was no proper drainage and directed the authorities to remove all the encroachments on drains in the Rajinder Nagar area by Friday.

"This is such a serious incident. There is infrastructure failure in the city at a large scale," the bench said, adding that the situation is absolutely chaotic at the ground level and wondered if the civic authorities even exist at the ground level.

The court has listed the matter for further hearing on August 2.

(With PTI inputs)