Failure to move out in time cost family of 4 their lives
Bodies of Jamal and Fatema were brought out from the debris within couple of hours only.
Mumbai: His relatives kept on urging him to shift to safer place instead of risking his life by living in a rickety structure. But Jaffar Sayed Hussain kept hoping for the best. He delayed his decision of moving out of the ill-fated Hussaini building, which crashed on Thursday morning, as he was waiting for a better proposal from the developer. The delay finally turned fatal as his entire family of four members was killed in the collapse mishap.
Jaffar (46), who was having a dealership of AC machines’ company at Mazgaon, was staying on the second floor of Hussaini building along with his wife Reshma (38), son Jamal (19) and daughter Fatema (14). Jamal was doing FYBcom from the Bhavan’s College, whereas Fatema was studying at St Agnes School in Class 9.
Jaffar’s cousin Ammar Rizvi lives at a stone’s throw away from the Hussaini building. As the building collapsed on Thursday morning, he frantically started searching for his cousin’s family at the mishap site. However, bodies of Jamal and Fatema were brought out from the debris within couple of hours only.
As the rescue operations went on, Ammar was pinning his hopes on the survival of Jaffar and Reshma. However, they were dashed too as both were found dead under the debris late in the night.
“We kept on telling Jaffar bhai to move out of the building with immediate effect. But he kept delaying the decision saying he was hopeful that the redevelopment process would start soon. He kept waiting for a better proposal from the SBUT for the redevelopment, but it never came to him. The delay proved costly as his entire family lost the life in the collapse,” said Ammar.
All four members of the family were buried on Friday.