New Delhi: CBI has found “dereliction of duty and negligence” on the part of three building department officials of Municipal Corporation of Delhi in the 2024 Old Rajendra Nagar coaching centre flooding case. It, however, concluded that there was “nothing on record” to indicate any lapse by two senior officers.Principal district and sessions judge Dinesh Bhatt had ordered the probe following a protest petition filed by advocate Abhijit Anand on behalf of J Dalvin Suresh, father of Nevin Dalvin, one of the three UPSC aspirants who died in the incident.In a closure report filed on July 8, the agency held then junior engineer (building) Arnav Kumar Dutta, assistant engineer Rajeev Kumar Jain and executive engineer Kumar Mahendra responsible for lapses that contributed to the continued unauthorised use of the basement where Nevin, Tanya Soni and Shreya Yadav drowned on July 27, 2024. Then superintending engineer Ajay Nagpal and then deputy commissioner Kumar Abhishek were given a clean chit.The report alleged that despite knowing that the basement was being used as an examination hall by the coaching institute, Dutta had acted “to conceal facts” and “deliberately mentioned it as furniture storage”. Despite inspecting the premises multiple times, he “deliberately did not report” the basement’s commercial use to his superiors, CBI observed.According to the agency, Jain “showed negligence in examining the documents and failed to carry out proper verification” regarding the misuse. The report similarly found that Mahendra “failed to ascertain the misuse” despite the lease deed specifically stating it would be used for coaching purposes. However, CBI found no culpability against Nagpal, noting that the file came before him only twice in the normal course of official processing and that he was neither the inspecting officer nor privy to factual verification. “Nothing on record indicates any lapse… on his part.” The agency also cleared Abhishek, observing that subordinate officials did not report any misuse of the basement to him.
