Mumbai: Rejecting the discharge plea of six accused employees of PAPAA Shipping Pvt Ltd and AFCONS Infrastructure Ltd who were booked for negligence during the sinking of the barge PAPAA 305 (P-305) and loss of 71 lives when cyclone Tauktaeraged in 2021, a sessions court on Friday stated that there was a prima facie case to proceed against them.In the case of the officers of PAPAA Shipping, in three separate orders, additional sessions judge S B Pawar said, “As per the service order, prima facie it was the responsibility of PAPAA Shipping Pvt Ltd to maintain and repair life rafts, and the malfunctioned life rafts on P-305 were also equally responsible for the casualties.The report of DG Shipping further provides that the competence of the shore-based management (PAPAA Shipping Pvt Ltd, Afcons, and ONGC) as well as the staff of AWB P-305 were not of the required level to deal with the situation during the incident. Therefore, prima facie there is material against the responsible officers of PAPAA Shipping Pvt Ltd to proceed against them as well.”On May 17, 2021, P-305, which the company provided to a contractor working on the maintenance of ONGC’s offshore oil and gas fields, sank. While 186 people were rescued, 71 bodies were recovered, and six others went missing.In orders relating to officers of AFCONS, the judge said that the contention that the incident occurred solely due to the cyclone is prima facie unacceptable. “The documents on record indicate that the responsible officers from Afcons were not only negligent during the incident but they were instrumental in not shifting the barge to the place of shelter at the right time. Thus, there is prima facie material against them to proceed and to frame charge,” the judge said in three separate orders. The accused were booked under the stringent charge ofculpable homicidenot amounting to murder.The six whose pleas were rejected are Nitin Singh, a director of PAPAA Shipping; Akhilesh Tiwari, technical superintendent, PAPAA Shipping; Prasad Rane, office administrator, PAPAA Shipping; Sajjan Joshi, deputy general manager (operations) in AFCONS; Sanjay Jha, general manager (projects) in AFCONS; and Kumar Rudra, vice-president, oil and gas division in AFCONS. The judge noted that though cyclone Tauktae was responsible for the unfortunate accident leading to a large number of casualties, the immediate cause for the incident was the decision not to shift P-305 to a place of safety even after receipt of weather alarm and forecast about the cyclone.“The chargesheet further shows that another factor which equally contributed to the number of casualties was malfunctioned life rafts on P-305 and the safety measures were not up to the mark,” the judge said.The judge said that the statement of witnesses suggests that work of about five to six more days remained to be completed. “Therefore, it prima facie appears that shifting the barge to Mumbai port or to the place of shelter far away from the field was not in the economic interest of AFCONS,” the judge said.The judge mentioned that printouts of email communications exchanged by AFCONS to various barges or vessels at the field indicate that instructions were issued to proceed to Mumbai port but no such instruction seems to have been issued to P-305. The judge denied the submissions that the barge master, Rakesh Ballav, who also died in the incident, was not the sole and independent decision-maker. Ballav was made an accused in the case.With reference to life-saving appliances, the judge said that it appeared that P-305 was provided with 36 inflatable liferafts and only one rescue boat. “It appears from the report of DG Shipping based on the statements of survivors that the liferafts did not inflate correctly and collapsed, which indicates that these were not serviced and maintained in proper condition. In the conclusion, it is mentioned that P-305 does not appear to have been maintained to the required standard, the servicing of liferafts was not satisfactory as it did not ensure that liferafts were functional when it was required at the time of actual emergency,” the judge said.While the verdict on the discharge pleas was pronounced on Friday, the detailed orders were made available on Tuesday. Opposing the discharge pleas, special public prosecutor Ajay Misar submitted that the accused failed to call back P-305 to shelter for monetary consideration as a small part of the work as per contract remained to be done.It was the prosecution’s case that ONGC contracted a consortium of AFCONS Infrastructure Ltd, Trinue Energy Solutions Pvt Ltd, and Halani International Ltd for the ‘Life Extension of Well Head Platform Project (LEWPP-I & II)’ in the Arabian Sea. This project involved the refurbishment, replacement, and modification of equipment, systems, piping, and subsea repairs for unmanned platforms in the Mumbai High North, Mumbai High South, Neelam, and Heera fields. For this project, AFCONS chartered the accommodation work barge PAPAA-305 (P-305), capable of accommodating 300 people. It is the case of the prosecution that after receiving a weather alarm in respect of cyclone Tauktae, all the barges and vessels which were in the field of the ONGC project were given instructions to shift to the shelter except P-305. The Yellow Gate police registered an FIR against barge P-305’s captain, Rakesh Ballav, and nine others.