Kolkata, June 30 : Nearly five years after a devastating fire at the city's AMRI Hospitals left 92 dead, a city court on Thursday framed charges including culpable homicide against 16 accused.
The 16 accused - directors and officials of the hospital-- have been charged under section 304 (Punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian Penal Code which carries a maximum jail term of 10 years where the act done to cause death is done with the knowledge but without the intention to cause death.
Apart from Section 304, the 16 accused have been charged under Section 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) and Section 38 (effect caused partly by act and partly by omission) of the IPC.
The December 9, 2011 pre-dawn blaze in the hospital located in south Kolkata's Dhakuria choked to death mostly critically ill patients, many of them in their sleep.
Among the accused are the then hospital directors Shravan Kumar Todi, Radhey Shyam Goenka, Radhey Shyam Agarwal, Ravi Todi, Manish Goenka, Prashant Goenka, Aditya Agarwal, Priti Sureka, Rahul Todi, Mani Chhetri and Pronab Dasgupta, and executive director Dayanand Agarwal.
The remaining accused are hospital officials Preeta Banerjee, Sajid Hossain, Sanjib Pal and Satyabrata Upadhyay.
