CBI in January, 2021 arrested the then director of ABCI Pawan Baid for allegedly bribing the chief North Eastern Railway official to get a contract.
As the stone quarry in south Mizoram caved in leading to death of eight labourers, the questions over the labour safety is further raising its heads. It has not yet come out whether the labourers were wearing protection gears or were equipped enough to survive any such accidents.
They were working for ABCI infrastructures private limited that is constructing road between Hnahthial and Dawn village. The labourers were taking stones out from the quarry for this project only.
ABCI is a construction company that takes up government tenders and build roads, highways, bridges and claims itself to be ‘pioneer Infrastructures companies in North - East India.’ Earlier known as Maxxom Vyapaar Private Limited, it changed the name to ABCIIPL only in 2002.
Even though the construction company has a formidable experience of several decades as it claims in its website, previous media reports do not give it enough room to come clean on a few occasions.
In January, 2021 CBI arrested the then director of ABCI Pawan Baid who allegedly paid bribe of Rs. 1 crore to the Chief Administrative Officer of Northeast Frontier Railways Mahender Singh Chauhan for getting contracts.
Chauhan was also arrested for allegedly asking for the bribe money from ABCI for awarding contract, processing the bills and releasing the payments.
As per the reports of India TV, Pawan Baid, the then director of ABCI had sent the money to one of its employees Bhupendra Rawat in Delhi through hawala racket. Rawat then took the money to Dehradun, Uttarakhand where it was received by Indra Singh, brother-in-law of Chauhan.
It was related to a project in North-eastern railways for which CBI alleged that the accused officials were receiving bribes from the private company ABCI reports NDTV.
In a statement, the then spokesperson of CBI RC Joshi said, “It was also alleged that some senior public functionaries of North East Frontier Railways were involved in corrupt practices with private contractors for the ongoing projects in the North-East Frontier Railways.”
The central probe agency pressed charges of criminal conspiracy and corruption under Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 against the director Pawan Baid and the construction company ABCI.
In subsequent raids CBI recovered Rs. 2.04 crores from a South Delhi hotel where it was allegedly kept by the executives of ABCI. In their earlier searches across Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Assam and Tripura CBI found approximately Rs. 2.39 crores, India TV report says.
After Chauhan’s arrest on January 17 when the central probe agency was searching for Baid, he was on run. On January 23, non-bailable warrant had been issued against him and he was arrested subsequently.
“The accused (Baid) was absconding since January 17, 2021 and was not joining the investigation. Subsequently, a Non-Bailable Warrant was issued on January 23, 2021 against the said accused by the Special Judge CBI Cases, New Delhi,” CBI spokesperson Joshi said.
ABCI in its website mentions that they have clients like Airports Authority of India, Water Resource, Irrigation Department, Assam, Indian Railway Construction Limited to name a few.
As the question of labour safety and protection are further coming up, ABCI’s role and the way the contract had been received needs to be looked at.
Compromises in investment for labour safety sometimes come as a consequence of soared cost of a project that is received through bribes or other means.