Nearly a decade after eight persons lost their lives in a fire at Kurla’s Hotel City Kinara in 2015, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday held Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) negligent and directed it to pay Rs 50 lakh each to their kin within 12 weeks.
Slamming BMC for “gross negligence” over granting approvals without following norms, the HC observed that “an utter failure of its officials in the discharge of their statutory duties” was a “proximate cause of the fire”. It said the BMC can be held “vicariously liable for acts and commission and omission of its officials”.
On October 16, 2015, a fire broke out on the mezzanine level of a hotel restaurant that killed eight people. Among the victims were seven undergraduate students from Don Bosco Institute of Technology and College and a 32-year-old employee of Sterling Engineering Consultants.
A bench of Justices BP Colabawalla and Firdosh P Pooniwalla passed a verdict on a plea filed in 2018 by parents of seven victims and wife of the eighth deceased challenging the order of the February, 2017 Lokayukta order. The Lokayukta had rejected their plea seeking an investigation, observing that a compensation of Rs 1 lakh each has already been paid to them by the state government, prompting them to move HC.
Senior advocate Naushad Engineer for the petitioners argued that the restaurant was operating without proper permission, including no-objection certificate (NOC) from the fire department, it was the duty of BMC inspectors to shut it down.
Senior advocate AY Sakhare for the BMC claimed that the incident was a direct result of “reckless and negligent actions of hotel owner and operator, who violated safety norms”, and the civic body cannot be made liable to pay compensation.
However, the bench quashed and set aside Lokayukta’s order noting that it failed to consider that Rs 1 lakh was merely an ad-hoc compensation and it did not consider the actual compensation to be paid to the petitioners.
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The HC observed that BMC should have maintained “higher standard of care” in matters concerning public safety and that no action was taken despite civic officials were aware of the breach, which was a “fire hazard” that the mezzanine floor/loft area, which can be only used for storage purposes was being used to serve customers.
The court said it was “even more shocking” that Kinara was granted an eating housing licence without obtaining any fire NOC from the Fire Brigade Department and said the same was “one of the most egregious breaches committed not only by the owner of Kinara but also by BMC”. It also noted that the BMC had permitted the use of LPG cylinders without licence and their storage in the loft area of the restaurant.
The HC said BMC neither acted on complaints made about violations by the restaurant nor its own inspection reports.
The HC further observed that except for one victim who was 32-year-old, all others were students and were nearly 20 years old having dependents, therefore they had “full working life ahead of them” and they would “earn a good salary during their whole working life”.
“Keeping all these factors in mind, in our view, in respect of each victim, compensation of at least Rs30 lakh would be payable in 2015 (year of incident). Considering inflation and the interest that the said sum of Rs 30 lakh would have earned over the period of 10 years, the compensation payable to each of the Petitioners, in 2025, would be Rs 50 lakh,” the bench held, while holding BMC to be liable to pay Rs 50 lakh compensation to each petitioner.