Barinder Saluja, Chandigarh: Jan 30 : On the wee hours of the 30 January, around 3.40 am, when the Police control room received a call from a chowkidar of the Record Room of Punjab & Haryana High Court in Chandigarh, who reported about dense smoke coming out of the windows of the Record Room. Fire tenders were pressed into the action immediately but till they reached the spot the damage was done. The sources revealed that 70 % to 80 % of the Civil Revision department of the record room was gutted in the fire. Civil Revision room is that room where the pending cases files pertaining to Civil cases are placed “SAFELY” as on their date they are to be presented in the courts of various judges.
But this morning, almost all of these files met the same fate which happened in 1998-99, when the same Record room caught the fire some what in the same manner even at around same time of the hour. History has repeated again, after 12 years, resulting to the same, destruction of the vital records. The burning question remains the same that whether it was a sabotage or an accident? According to the CFSL team, which swung into the action moment the fire department was able to drowse the fire after the efforts of Eight Fire Tenders & around 30 – 40 fire personnel’s who fought for Seven hour to bring the fire under control, the cause of the fire was due to short circuit in the computer section.
All the senior officials of the Chandigarh Bureaucracy, leading from Chief Justice of Punjab & Haryana High Court – Mr. Ranjan Gogoi, Home Secretary – Mr. Ram Niwas, Finance Secretary – Mr. V.K .Singh, IGP – Mr. Srivastava, SSP – Naunihal Singh and other Judges, who visited the spot and took the canvass of the situation. When asked about the grievance of the incident, all of them slipped away by saying that the CFSL team is on the job and their report will reveal the truth.
But the negligence on the part of the officials of the department/record room of the High Court could not be side lined as they could not learn from the 12 years back similar kind of fire incident which too destroyed the records. Since then they have not been able to make the backup copies of the records nor they have saved the data in the computers. This marks a BIG ? on the inability of the High Court to create backup of the records.
Till 1 pm the smoke could be seen coming out of the windows of the record room which showed that the fire was not completely drowsed till then. The remaining record were destroyed due to the water used to control the fire. This time the department must learn the lesson and should make the backup records of the original files.