Six people died and nine others were injured in a building collapse on Saturday evening in Sidulagab, officials said on Sunday, even as rescuers continued to comb through the rubble, after another incident in the capital that raised concern about illegal construction and loose law enforcement standards.
The four-storey building, of which two additional storeys were under construction, collapsed at around 7.25pm in Saidulagap, a busy neighborhood just down the road from Saket Metro station. Narrow lanes meander together, rows of newly constructed buildings crammed wall-to-wall in this south Delhi neighbourhood, home to students, candidates preparing for standardized exams and professionals early in their careers.
The building – which housed a co-working space – collapsed into a nearby restaurant, where several students were having dinner. Some parts of the building, which police officers said was an illegal construction, also collided with a building on the right, and showed a video of the incident taken by a bystander. HT was unable to verify the authenticity of the video.
The immediate cause of the collapse is unclear.
The six victims are doctor Ravi Prakash (26 years old); Ekta (23); Kapil (26), Alok Verma (23) and Nalin Rai (23), all BTech graduates; And Parvati Ojha (39 years old), the owner of the restaurant.
The Delhi Police has filed a case under Sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 125 (act endangering life or personal safety) and 290 (negligent conduct in construction work) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita against unidentified persons, and said it is working to identify the people who own the building.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) suspended two of its engineers, the state government ordered an investigation, and Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said: “Strict action will be taken against all unauthorized constructions.”
Police officers and residents said that most of the injured were engineers or doctors who study in training institutes in the area or live in the neighborhood. As of Sunday evening, seven people were being treated in hospital and two had been discharged.
Dhrupal Patel (27), who was studying in the nearby institute and preparing for NEET-PG, said he and his friends heard a loud sound and assumed it was a thunderstorm.
“But when we went out, we saw a cloud of dust,” he added.
“For the first few minutes, we couldn’t perceive anything, then we discovered that the building had collapsed and the restaurant was buried under it. We could hear people screaming. We helped about five or six people get out from under the rubble. By then, the police had arrived and started rescuing people,” Patel said.
About 150 people studying at the institute, which trains students for medical entrance exams, left the building.
A Delhi Police officer familiar with the matter said that the preliminary investigation confirmed that the area was an unauthorized colony.
“It appears that the building was illegal, but a team has been formed to ascertain ownership details,” the officer said.
An MCD official said that no new construction was allowed to be built in Saidulagap. “There are no approved planning plans or building plans in this area. It is an unauthorized colony developed on agricultural land,” the official said.
The collapse destroyed a set of hopes and aspirations in the very neighborhood that the victims were preparing to realize.
Nalin arrived in Delhi a year ago to prepare for her engineering services exams. Kapil had cleared a competitive exam on Saturday itself and went to the restaurant to celebrate with friends. Ravi’s father, a farmer in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, had taken out loans to finance his MBBS degree from a Kyrgyz university. Ekta, also an MBBS graduate from Kyrgyzstan, was preparing for the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE). Alok, from Lucknow, was preparing for the engineering services exam.
One of the injured, Ashutosh Kumar (23), a B.Tech graduate who was preparing for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) and Engineering Services Test, said he was having dinner with friends when the building fell.
He suffered injuries to his hands and legs. “We had no time to react. I was with Nalin, Kapil, Anuj, Vishal and Aditya. The officials rescued me about five minutes after the accident,” he said.
“But Kapil was not pulled out for at least 20 minutes. I could see him,” Kumar said.
Friends and family members of the deceased also said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and other agencies were slow to respond and lacked equipment.
“They only had one gas cutter and they did not have scanners to check if there was a body under the rubble. Shockingly, the NDRF did not have proper equipment,” Kumar said.
Ojha ran the canteen for four years. Her family said she ran inside to warn students when she felt the building collapsing.
