At around 9am on April 23, 2013, cracks appeared in the pillars and walls of the second floor of the Rana Plaza building in the Savar Bazar area that housed several garment factories. RMG export leaders visited the spot after receiving the news and advised the garment owners of the building to stop all operations until the building was inspected by experts. But the five garment owners and their men forced the workers to join work the next day April 24 through intimidation.
Abdul Khaleque and Sohel Rana, father and son -- the owners of the building that was constructed flouting rules, supported the factory authorities. “Rana Plaza won't collapse even in the next 100 years,” Rana boasted on that day, reads the case documents.
On the morning of April 24, there was a sudden power cut in the building at around 9am. When the factory authorities switched on the generators, the building started collapsing with a bang with thousands of workers performing their duties and eventually trapped under the rubble. In frantic efforts for 17 days, at least 1,136 bodies were recovered and over 2,000 were rescued alive from the spot.
A probe body formed by the Home Ministry described the incident as a “culpable homicide” and gave five reasons for the collapse: using low-quality construction materials, use of black money in the illegal construction and approval process, not following the Building Code, establishing garment factories on top of a market complex that had heavy machinery and generators, and for forcing the workers to enter the hazardous structure.
Ten years have passed since the horrific industrial disaster that shocked the world and the country's RMG sector has seen significant improvement, but the process of ensuring justice for the deaths -- caused due to the negligence of some people -- has been sluggish.
Murder case progress
A total of three cases were registered over the collapse incident. Police filed a murder case and charged 41 people including Rana, then Savar municipality mayor Refayet Ullah, local councillor Md Ali Khan and some officials of Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) in June 2015. After the accused were indicted on July 18, 2016, eight accused filed writ petitions with the High Court challenging the indictment order. It took the High Court five years to quash the petitions.
Trial in the case began on January 31 last year with the testimony of the plaintiff of the case and then sub-inspector of Savar police station Wali Ashraf. The court of Dhaka District and Sessions Judge AHM Habibur Rahman Bhuiyan recorded his testimony.
With five on March 15, only 48 out of 594 witnesses have testified in the court. The next hearing is scheduled for May 15.
Meanwhile, building owner Shohel Rana, also a former Jubo League leader, secured bail from the High Court on April 6 this year, but the apex court later stayed the order in response to a petition by the government. Thirty-two of the accused are on bail, six are fugitives and two died during the trial period.
Building Code case
Rajuk filed the second case against Rana and 11 others with Savar police station for using substandard materials and violating building construction law. The investigators found that Rana got approval for a six-storey building, and later, violating the related law he illegally obtained approval for four more floors.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) pressed charges against 18 people including Rana. Of them, Rana is in jail, five are on the run and others are out on bail. On July 18, 2016, the Dhaka Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court framed charges against the accused.
But the court has yet to start recording the deposition of witnesses as several accused submitted revision petitions, challenging the indictment orders, with the High Court.
Corruption in construction
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed another case regarding corruption in the construction process and pressed charges against 10 people, including Rana, despite being denied approval to charge six government officials. At that time, the public administration and the labour ministries argued that those who had not committed serious crimes cannot be charged in the case.
A Dhaka court indicted the accused on May 21, 2017, but recording testimony in the case has not been finished yet.
The other accused include then Savar mayor Refatullah, former Savar municipality CEO Uttam Kumar Roy, several engineers, licence inspector Abdul Motalib, Khulna University Associate Professor ATM Masud Reza, and three RMG unit owners – Phantom Apparels Ltd Chairman Md Aminul Islam, New Wave Bottom Limited Managing Director Bazlus Samad and Ether Tex Limited Chairman Azizur Rahman.
Rana, his mother jailed in ACC cases
On August 22, 2017, a special court in Dhaka sentenced Sohel Rana to three years imprisonment for giving false information in his wealth statement to the ACC. The court also fined him Tk50,000. In his statement, Rana declared the construction cost of the building to be Tk13.1 crore whereas the investigators assessed it to be TK3.6 crore.
The same court, on March 29, 2018, sentenced his mother Marjina Begum, to six years in jail and fined her Tk10,000 in the ACC case filed for hiding wealth information.
The court also ordered one-third of her illegally-amassed assets be confiscated.
What the prosecution says
Public Prosecutor Bimal Samaddar of the District and Sessions Judge Court said the case hearings took place every 15 or 30 days when as many as five witnesses were produced in a single day. On the other hand, the lawyers have other cases to handle at the same time.
He added that finding the witnesses became difficult since many of them no longer lived at their previous addresses. As a result, they were brought to court with the help of law enforcement agencies from different places.
“All in all, there are many challenges. The trial court could not start the proceedings of the murder case in time due to the stay orders issued by the High Court in response to writ petitions by some accused. Six of the petitions have been quashed but two others have still remained pending. Later last year, it was decided to proceed with the case of those who do not have a stay order in their favour,” he added.
