22 engineers, officers found guilty in Lucknow hotel fire probe

The Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) has submitted its initial probe report on the Levana Suites hotel fire, recommending action against 22 engineers and zonal officers for allegedly conniving with the builder and turning a blind eye to illegal construction activity.

The building now faces demolition since it was illegally constructed.

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The fire on Monday left four people dead, while seven others suffered burn injuries.

The LDA has also lodged an FIR at the Hazratganj police station against Mukesh Jasnani of M/S Bansal Construction and his partners for carrying out the commercial activity of running a hotel on a residential plot.

LDA Vice-Chairman Indramani Tripathi constituted the probe committee headed by the Authority’s Secretary Pawan Kumar Gangwar to fix accountability for the incident and the report was submitted late on Monday night.

After the initial probe, the committee found engineers posted in ‘Zone six’ (which includes Hazratganj) since July 2, 2017, responsible for the incident.

The 22 engineers/zonal officers indicted by the LDA inquiry team include executive engineers Arun Kumar Singh, O.P. Mishra (both retired), superintending engineers Zahiruddin and Kamaljeet Singh, assistant engineers O.P. Gupta, Rakesh Mohan, Radhey Shyam Singh, Vinod Kumar Gupta, Amar Kumar Mishra, Nagendra Singh, and Ismail Khan.

Similarly, the junior engineers include Rajeev Kumar Srivastava, J.N. Dubey, J.D. Singh, Ravindra Srivastava, Udaiveer Singh, Mohammad Ismail Khan, Anil Mishra, P.K. Gupta, Sushil Kumar Varma, Ambrish Sharma, and Ranganath Singh.