A total of 19 persons have died so far and 23 others injured after a wing of a residential building, Naik Nagar Society, in Kurla collapsed on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday.
Of the total injured, 14 of them are still in hospital in a crucial situation. Moreover, two pigeons were also rescued alive by the team.
This was one of the longest rescue operations that went on for a day, which ended on Tuesday evening, June 28. However, during the operations, there were fears that the other wing might collapse too as they were shaky.
Most of the dead and injured were labourers, watchmen and tailors. Police have arrested a civic contractor, Dilip Vishwas, who had rented the houses despite knowing the condition of the building was arrested within 24 hours after lodging an FIR, under IPC section 304 for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
After the incident, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed grief at the loss of lives and announced an ex-gratia of INR 2 lakh each from the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund for the next of kin and INR 50,000 for the injured.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, too, announced aid of INR 5 lakh from his relief fund to the families of the victims.
The locals said as the building collapsed, there was a loud noise, followed by tremors and shaking of walls. A cloud of dust swirled around the spot soon after. Residents from the neighbourhood thought it was a cylinder blast and came running out.
The Fire Brigade and disaster response force teams reached the spot immediately and started the rescue operations. The victims were taken to civic-run Rajawadi and Sion Lokmanya Tilak hospitals.
As per BMC officials, the society, which was constructed in 1975 on collector land and which housed over 40 people, was first served a notice for repairs in 2013. In 2016, BMC disconnected water and electricity to the society asking them to vacate, but the residents refused. They then got a structural auditor to submit a report that their structure was repairable.
The Aam Aadmi Party held the BMC responsible for the loss of lives as a dilapidated building in Naik Nagar collapsed.
Slamming the ineffective BMC, the party stated that building collapses had become an annual tragedy that the BMC refuses to take cognisance of. The party also slammed Aaditya Thackeray's callous statement that blamed the victims of the tragedy.
In an official statement, AAP mentioned that upwards of a 100 people have lost their lives in close to 2000 incidents of building and house collapses between 2018 till date. Despite such horrific numbers the BMC each year chooses to abdicate its responsibility to Mumbaikars by doing no more than issuing notices to at risk buildings. As pointed out earlier in June by the Aam Aadmi Party the BMC takes no steps in ensuring those living in at risk buildings are rehabilitated. To add insult to injury Shiv Sena leaders right from Corporator Pravina Morajkar to Minister Aaditya Thackeray blame the victims of the collapse for their own deaths.
An Aam Aadmi Party delegation led by Mumbai leaders Suresh Acharya, Ramesh Bhutikar Deshmukh & Raju Thorat has also visited the site.
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