A structural consultant was arrested on Friday in connection with the collapse of a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district earlier this week.
Chetan Patil, a resident of Kolhapur, was apprehended early in the morning in a joint operation by Kolhapur crime branch and Malvan police. He was then transferred to Malvan police custody.
Patil, who was named in the FIR in the case, had previously denied being the structural consultant for the project. He claimed he was only tasked with working on the platform for the statue, while a Thane-based company handled the statue-related work.
The 35-foot statue of the 17th-century Maratha warrior king at Rajkot fort in Sindhudurg's Malvan collapsed around 1 p.m. on Monday, August 26, less than nine months after its unveiling by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The collapse of the statue triggered a political storm in Maharashtra, which is headed to the polls. A technical committee was set up by the state government to find out why the statue toppled. The Eknath Shinde-led government also pointed out that the project was handled by the Indian Navy.
On its part, the Navy said it conceptualised and steered the project of installing the Shivaji statue in coordination with the state government which provided funding for it. In a statement, the Navy said it remains committed to assisting in all measures to repair, restore and reinstate the statue at the earliest.
Meanwhile, members of the ruling Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, also staged silent protests across Maharashtra over the incident.
Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said he was ready to put his head on the Maratha warrior's feet and apologise 100 times for the collapse of the statue. He also appealed to opposition parties not to "play politics" in this matter.
"We have formed committees. One committee will investigate it and take action and the other committee has been formed with the intention of building the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj as soon as possible... We are working on a war footing, we are preparing to build a grand statue of Shivaji Maharaj there as soon as possible," Shinde added.
