Executive engineer arrested in Jaundice outbreak case

The Executive engineer of Irrigation and Public Health department, Vinod Kumar was today arrested by the SIT, taking the total number of persons arrested in connection with alleged contamination of water that resulted in spread of jaundice in Shimla to five.
The SIT had earlier arrested a Junior Engineer and Supervisor of the Sewerage Treatment Plant (STP) on January 21, the contractor on January 29 and the Sub-Divisional Engineer of Irrigation and Public Health department yesterday.
The Sub-Divisional Engineer was today produced in a local court which remanded him to police custody till February 2.
Vinod Kumar was incharge of the STP and also lifting of water from the source at Ashwani Khud and mainly responsible for ensuring supply of safe water to the residents.

The special Investigation team (SIT) was constituted by Shimla police to probe the causes for jaundice outbreak in Shimla town and fix the responsibility for the alleged lapses.
The SIT today again visited the Ashwani Khud water supply pumping site and STP to gather more facts and head of SIT DSP, Dhawal said that that services of experts would be requisitioned for investigating the technical aspects and a consultant would be engaged soon.

The spurt in jaundice cases in Shimla town had caused an alarm and rattled the official machinery and the supply of water from Ashwani Khud water supply scheme was stopped on January 2 after a team of Shimla Municipal Corporation visited the site and found that the water had been contaminated due to mixing of sewage.

The investigations have gained pace after the arrest of the contractor and the SIT is looking into the role of the officials who overlooked supply of contaminated water to residents, causing outbreak of Jaundice in epidemic form.
So far about 1200 cases of jaundice have been reported.