Mumbai: Three persons died and eight others were injured after a two-storey two-storey und-er-construction structure in a chawl collapsed at Motilal Nagar, Goregaon (east), on Sunday morning.
According to civic officials, the structure was part of a chawl of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada). Labourers were working at the construction project site when the slab of the building gave way at 9.15 am.
According to local residents, several people were trapped under the debris at the time of the incident.
Fire brigade and police personnel rushed to the spot and started a rescue operation. Teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were also summoned for relief work, said a fire official.
Ultimately, the victims — most of whom were labourers — were rescued and rushed to Siddharth Hospital in Goregaon.
One of the labourers, Ramankumar Gorem-andal (30) was declared dead on arrival, whereas Subhash Chavan (38) and Rajendra Nishad (40) died soon after, said Dr Kattakvar from Siddharth Hospital.
Three victims — Mangal Bansa (35), Munna Shaikh (30) and Shekhar Sinu (35) — are undergoing treatment, and their condition is stable whereas Shinu (35), Hari Wadar (3), Shankar Patel (21), Saroja Wadar (24) and Ramesh Nishad (32) were discharged after receiving treatment.
“The structure was an old Mhada row house and we are inquiring if was an illegal alteration that caused the incident,” said an official.
An accidental death report was registered at the Goregaon Police station and a probe is underway, he said.
The civic authorities have vacanted two neighbouring houses that abut the ill-fated structure.
Priti Maurya, the resident of one house, said, “There were nine people who were residing in the house which collapsed and they were mostly from UP and Bihar. Out of the nine, six left for the village. Thus, they escaped death. Now, I am worried about when I will be able to reside in my home since the civic authorities have asked us to vacate the premises.”
Shocked to our core, says deceased’s family
The family of Raman-kumar Gorema-ndal, one of the three labou-rers who died in Sunday’s under-construction building collapse, is besides itself. Goremandal hails from Baksar in Bihar. He had come to Mumbai in search of his bread and butter.
Abhimanyu, Gorem-andal’s brother, told The Asian Age, “This is utterly devastating. We are shocked to our core. We can’t believe that the person who was talking to us last night was experiencing his last night ever.”
Goremandal was rushed to Siddharth Hospital where the on-duty doctor declared him death.
According to doctors, Goremandal had such a bad fall that had severed his spinal cord and, since plaster had collapsed on him, he suffered a severe brain injury.
“This might have been the cause of his sad demise,” said one of the doctors.
Casualty medical officer Dr Nand Kumar Wade said, “We had total eleven patients out of which three were declared brought dead, three we kept under observation and one of them is suffering from ribs fracture. We have shifted him to the civic-run Cooper Hospital.”
One victim, Manoj Ranvanshi (35), whose ribs were fractured, had to be kept in an intensive care unit (ICU), which is not there at Siddharth Hospital. Dr Wade said, “Due to unavailability of a machine, we had to shift the patient to a super speciality hospital.”
