THANE: An auto rickshaw driver, who lost his wife and minor daughter in the Lucky Compound building crash in April 2013, has blamed the corrupt civic officials for conniving with the builders who built the constructed the seven-storied Adarsh building near Shil.Rajkumar Fattebahadur Singh (42), who is a key witness in the case, said the two builders— Jamil and Salim— had hatched a perfect plan to ensure that the illegal buildings were not touched by the authorities.The crash opened a Pandora’s Box of the under-the-table dealings between the contactors who were brazenly flouting all norms and constructing illegal buildings along the Shil-Diva-Mumbra belt.Singh was one of the occupants of the tenement in the building which came down like a pack of cards and claimed 74 lives and left more than 60 people injured.Special public prosecutor Shishir Hirey said that Singh is the prime witness in the case as he knowns the two builder for more than five to six years and was aware of their modus operandi.“Salim and Jamil initially constructed tin sheds on the open plot and sold it to the needy. Once the plot was encroached upon, they started constructing the building. The entire multi-storied building came up within a matter of months. They then leased it out the tenements. They housed them in the building even when the construction was in progress,’’ Singh said.He added that they named the building complex Lucky Compound and first constructed Adarsh 1. After its completion, they began work on Adarsh-2 in January 2013,” Singh told the court. During his cross examination by defence counsel MZG Baba Shaikh , the witness admitted that he had not not stated some of the things that he deposed in the court to the police while giving his statement after the crash.There are a total of 27 accused being tried in the case.

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