'Apologise To My God': PM Modi On Chhatrapati Shivaji's Statue Collapse In Maharashtra

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday apologised for the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's statue in Maharashtra's Sindhudurg.

Speaking at an event in Palghar, the Prime Minister said that Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is not "just a name".

"Today, I bow my head and apologise to my god Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Our values are different, we are not those people who keep abusing and insulting the great son of Mother India, the son of this land, Veer Savarkar," he said.

"They are not ready to apologise, they are ready to go to the courts and fight," Modi added.

The Prime Minister's statement comes days after a 35-foot-long statue of the Maratha warrior king collapsed at the Rajkot fort in Sindhudurg district. The statue, built by the Indian Navy, was unveiled by PM Modi last year during Navy Day.

Notably, Modi is in Maharashtra to lay the foundation stone of Vadhvan Port project worth around Rs 76,000 crore in Palghar and address the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2024 in Mumbai.

Earlier in the day, police made the first arrest is connection with the statue collapse, taking into custody a structural consultant Chetan Patil.

Patil, a resident of Kolhapur, was taken into custody on Thursday night and handed over to the Sindhudurg police for further probe, said Kolhapur Superintendent of Police Mahendra Pandit, news agency PTI reported.

Patil, in an interview with ABP Majha channel on Wednesday, had said that he only submitted the design of the platform to the Indian Navy through the state's Public Works Department (PWD) and had nothing to do with the statue itself.

A structural engineer, Amresh Kumar, had explained that the corroded nuts and bolts were probably the reason behind the collapse of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue. He said that the "ankles" of a statue, which holds the weight of the entire structure, are the most critical for stability and therefore, require special attention in the designing stage.

As per the Bureau of Indian Standards, even though officials have claimed that winds blowing at speeds of 45 kilometers an hour caused the collapse, however wind speeds up to almost three times are accounted for while having designing a structure.

"In this statue's case, external factors such as loads or climatic conditions do not appear to have caused trouble. Rather, corrosion in the nuts and bolts, as mentioned in the PWD report, could have caused a failure of steel members making up the frame inside the statue," Kumar told news agency PTI.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had expressed concerns over the incident and said that another statue of the warrior king will be made and installed there.

The state government also got a lot of heat from the Opposition over the statue's collapse, alleging that it had not paid enough attention to the quality of work.