“My husband was only trying to reach a safe spot,” said Shima Kathuria, wife of Manuj Kathuria, who was arrested in connection with the deaths of three civil services aspirants inside a flooded basement of a coaching centre in Delhi’s Old Rajinder Nagar last week. She further said that the video clearly showed that there was no rash driving by Manuj Kathuria.
Manuj Kathuria, a businessman, was behind the wheels of an SUV which drove through the flooded street, causing the water to swell and breach the gates of the three-storey building of Rau’s IAS Study Circle and inundate the basement.
Defending her husband, Shima said that the allegations levelled against Manuj are “completely wrong”.
“There was no rash driving, the video is in front of everyone. My husband was not driving at a high speed. My husband was only trying to reach a safe spot,” she said while speaking to news agency ANI.
Furthermore, Shima also blamed Rau’s IAS Study Circle for running a library in the basement of the building without permission. She also wondered why the police didn’t close the roads when there was waterlogging in the area.
“The authorities will figure out who is at fault. Why was the coaching institute owner running a library there when they had a NOC only for storage? When there was severe waterlogging on the roads, police should have cordoned off the roads,” she said.
Shima also believed that her husband was a victim in the case and not an accused. “We are very positive. My husband has not done anything wrong. We have full faith in the judicial system and I am sure that the court will take the right decision,” she said in a separate conversation with news agency PTI.
Recalling her husband’s dramatic arrest, Shima said police arrived at their residence and told the family that they had come to question Manuj.
“The police said there is no criminal liability and they were just taking him for questioning since his vehicle was visible in the viral video captured around that time (when the water gushed in). Around 30 minutes later, my father-in-law got a call from him saying he had been arrested. It created a state of panic among us,” she added.
Speaking about the allegations of rash driving, Shima said that video which went viral on social media ‘clearly’ shows that the brake lights of the vehicle were switched on.
“He was driving in first gear on the waterlogged road. The car cannot be driven at a speed of 5 km/hour in that situation. But it was not speeding either; it must have been somewhere at 15 km/hr or 20 km/hr. He was applying brakes constantly and not speeding his SUV,” she said.
“The car would have stalled had he stopped. He did not know which buildings he crossed. He was making sure that he was driving straight and not hitting someone. We had never been to those institutes, nor knew how they are operating,” Shima added.
Three civil services aspirants — Shreya Yadav, Tanya Soni, and Nevin Dalwin — died on Saturday evening after water from a flooded drain gushed into the basement of Rau’s IAS Study Circle in Old Rajinder Nagar where a library was set up.
Source Agencies
