M’lore: 812 Foundation levels criminal charges on AAP Candidate M R Vasudev for air crash

Media Release

Mangalore, 15 Apr 2014: 812 Foundation states that although Marpally Ramaraya  Vasudev (M R Vasudev),  AAP candidate contesting in upcoming LS polls in Dakshina Kannada district is everything that AAP claims to root out of the society; Vasudev is a criminal who is directly responsible for the death of the 158 people who died in Mangalore Air Crash on May 22 2010.   Vasudev is the person who hid documents when application under the Right to Information (RTI) was made to his office to find the Truth about the Mangalore Air Crash.   Vasudeva is the person who broke every rule in the rulebook, showing his disregard for the law while he was in his office as the airport director.

 
Vasudeva spent his life either by being a part of the corrupt forces or by being silent to the corruption around him. If the Mangalore International Airport represents Vasudev’s credibility and development agenda, the Mangalore Air Crash represents the darker side of his involvement with corrupt forces. The poor Mangloreans around the Airport fought tooth and nail up to the Supreme Court (SC) to ensure that a deadly runway be not built in the name of development. Both Karnataka High Court and SC were misled by filing false affidavits, but every aspect of the truth foretold by the petition proved correct to the air crash on May 22 2010.
 

Vasudev was a shrewd bureaucrat. Once he came to know of the air crash, he returned to Mangalore Airport and the first thing he did was to illegally listen to Air Traffic Control (ATC) recordings. The law states that the ATC records need to be sealed immediately after an accident. But Vasudeva knew how to fool the general public; he knew the importance of the first impression. He shrewedly leaked to the media that it was a pilots fault and to this day the people of Mangalore believed that the air crash was the pilots fault.

 

 
The real story is that the Instrument Landing System (ILS) structure at the end of the runway was illegal and what killed the people was not the accident but the fire caused by the illegal structure. It took 158 innocent lives for Vasudeva and the Airport Authority of India (AAI) to wake up from their deep slumber. After the accident they buried the illegal structure.
The Court of inquiry reduced the distance of the ILS structure for the first time after the Air Crash to ensure that Vasudeva and the powers that be of AAI could be saved from prosecution.  Vasudev never conducted a fire drill in the Airport as per the rules and broke every rule in the rulebook while in office. For the first time, the firemen of the airport realized that their vehicles could not reach the accident spot. The people could have been saved had it been for proper fire vehicles, but the people got burnt alive because of Vasudev’s negligence and absolute disrespect of the law.

 
The application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act revealed many documents but the most crucial of them were held back and it was only in September 2013, the documents was leaked by some conscious employee of the AAI. That document reveals how Vasudev and the other top officers of AAI were aware of the dangers posed by the illegal structure. The document was signed by Vasudev on May 24 2006 and clearly gave the highest ratings of risk to the illegal structure, yet they did not ensure that corrective action (as was done after the accident) was taken before making the new runway of the Airport operational.

 
During the short listing process, 812 Foundation president Yashwant Shenoy  received many calls and he directed the callers to go through the website of the 812 Foundation (www.812foundation.org) where the criminal complaint in which M R Vasudev is named as an accused and the reply filed by the 812 Foundation in the High Court of Karnataka clearly explains the role of M R Vasudev.  Shenoy  absolutely sure that this background of Vasudeva would have been available with the AAP selection Committee and if they have chosen Vasudev, in spite of this knowledge, how are they different from the Congress or BJP whose candidates and policies are challenged by the AAP everyday.   Shenoy has an answer for AAP’s choice though. When asked about Vasudeva, he did tell them that Vasudev is  warm and a good man and if AAP is looking for submissive candidates who would always be ‘yes sir’ men, then Vasudev is the right man. If AAP is looking for men who respect law, who can change the way systems work in the country and who can stand up against corruption, then Vasudev will not fit the bill. It is not that Vasudev is just responsible for the death of 158 innocent people, it is also that he ruined hundreds of life, if not the thousands that circled around these 158 innocent souls that were burnt. Vasudev has forever put the life of the Mangloreans who use the Airport at grave risk because that Airport is a proof of the disrespect that the country has for the lives of the citizens (Aam Admi, as AAP calls it). The people who lost their loved ones would have certainly known how much value is put to the lives of a citizen in this country. If AAP expect M R Vasudev to change that system, then they are in a dream world for he was a part of that very system and he will continue to be a part of that very system.