New Delhi: The CBI has registered two cases against a retired Southern Railway engineer and several others for allegedly causing losses of around Rs 4 crore in construction work on the Milavittan-Melamarudur section of a new broad-gauge railway line in Tamil Nadu.
The agency has named Muhammed Salaiya, then deputy chief engineer in the Madurai construction division of Southern Railway, in both FIRs. William Jai, then an executive engineer in the division, and others have also been named in one of the cases, they said.
The cases relate to the 17.75-km Milavittan-Melamarudur section of a new broad-gauge line in Tuticorin district, part of the proposed Madurai-Tuticorin route. The Railway Board had sanctioned the project in March 2014 at an estimated cost of Rs 120.70 crore, according to the FIRs.
In the first case, the CBI alleged that two minor bridges were constructed without the required approval, despite the Railways having sanctioned only one bridge. A contract for the construction of both structures was awarded to a firm owned by Y Chinna Reddy on October 3, 2016, without obtaining prior approval from the competent authority, it alleged.
The bridges were completed on July 10, 2017, at a cost of Rs 3.59 crore. The agency alleged that the structures, located within 30 metres of each other on the same waterway, could have been combined into a single bridge.
The CBI further alleged that the bridges were constructed around four metres above the approved level without any technical justification. This led to additional expenditure on earthwork and land acquisition, causing a loss of Rs 2.57 crore, it said.
According to the FIR, a proposal seeking approval for the bridges was initiated only on May 24, 2019, nearly two years after their completion, allegedly to justify the "illegal construction".
Apart from Salaiya, the CBI has named the firm, through its managing director Reddy, as an accused in the case.
The second FIR, which also names Jai, alleges that the two engineers conspired with a Madurai resident during 2016-17 to construct a concrete retaining wall without adhering to the Railways' prescribed norms and procedures.
The agency alleged that the wall should have been constructed after the bridges. However, building it first left inadequate space for earthwork along the bridge approaches, resulting in the wall being buried.
The alleged irregularities caused a loss of Rs 1.44 crore, with the CBI describing the proposal for the wall as "flawed and unjustified", according to the FIR.