Bangladesh building disaster – Engineer arrested

More than 500 bodies have been recovered from the Bangladesh building that collapsed last week, authorities said today after an engineer was arrested in connection with the disaster.

Abdur Razzak Khan had warned that the building was unsafe but is also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the structure.

Khan worked as the Rana Plaza owner’s consultant when the owner made the illegal addition to his five-storey garment factory building, police officials said.

Owner Mohammed Sohel Rana called Khan to inspect the building after it developed cracks on April 23, local media reported.

That night Khan appeared on a private television station saying that after his inspection he told Rana to evacuate the garment factory building because it was not safe.

Khan, a former engineer at Jahangirnagar University near Savar, said he asked government engineers for the building to be examined further. He has been arrested on a charge of negligence.

Police ordered the building evacuated, but witnesses say Rana told people gathered outside the next morning that the building was safe and that individual unit managers told their workers to go inside. It collapsed hours later.

The elected mayor of Savar municipality, Mohammad Refatullah, has been suspended for alleged negligence in approving the design and layout of the doomed building, said Abu Alam, a top official of the local government ministry.

Mr Alam said an official investigation has found that the mayor ignored rules in approving the design and layout.

The mayor is from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which has criticised the suspension as politically motivated.

The confirmed death toll reached 501 as workers continued to pull bodies from the wreckage. The collapse was the deadliest disaster in Bangladesh’s lucrative garment industry, far surpassing a fire late last year that killed 112 workers at a garment factory that had locked doors and no fire escapes.

Workers are carefully using cranes as they continue to remove the concrete rubble.

“We are still proceeding cautiously so that we get the bodies intact,” said Major General Chowdhury Hassan Suhwardy, the commander of the area’s army garrison supervising the rescue operation.

The official number of missing has been 149 since Wednesday, although unofficial estimates are higher.

Rana was arrested earlier and is expected to be charged with negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work, which are punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail. Authorities have not said if more serious crimes will be added.

The Bangladesh High Court has ordered the government to confiscate Rana’s property and freeze the assets of the owners of the factories in Rana Plaza so the money can be used to pay the salaries of their workers.