Noida Police has raised a bill of Rs 64 lakh to Edifice Engineering for providing personnel as security escort when explosives were transported daily from Palwal, Haryana, to the Supertech twin tower demolition site during the process of charging the building, police said.
“A bill was emailed to Edifice Engineering around 10 days ago giving details of the expenses incurred for providing personnel while explosives were transported from Palwal, Haryana, to the site as well as the several personnel that were deployed for providing security at the site over the past few weeks leading up to the demolition, except the day the demolition took place,” said Rambadan Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Headquarters. The firm has not replied to the email yet, Singh added.
The process of charging the twin towers – placing around 3,700 kg of explosives in 9,640 holes drilled in the buildings – began on August 13 and was completed on August 22. The explosives which were manufactured in Nagpur were stored by an authorised magazine holder in Palwal, who transported the explosives from Palwal to the demolition site at Sector 93A Noida every day. Around 250-300 kg of explosives were used in charging the buildings daily.
However, officials from Edifice Engineering said they had no knowledge of such a bill being raised.
The twin towers, Apex and Ceyane, were demolished on August 28 at 2.30pm. Edifice Engineering, a Mumbai-based firm, had partnered with South Africa-based Jet Demolition to prepare the blast plan and execute the explosion. The demolition was fixed by the Supreme Court on August 28, with a one-week bandwidth ending on September 4 to account for any marginal delay on account of technical reasons or weather conditions, as requested by Noida authority.
Around 400 personnel were deployed by Noida Police at strategic locations around the towers which were monitored by CCTV cameras at the Incident Command Centre on the demolition day. Around 5,000-7,000 residents from neighbouring Emerald Court and ATS Village, which were in the vicinity of the demolition site, were instructed to evacuate their homes before 7 am on Sunday and could return only in the evening. According to RWAs of both societies, a majority of residents have returned to their homes.
