MUMBAI: Twelve people, eight of them children, were killed and seven others injured after an illegal three-storey building collapsed in Malad’s Malwani locality around 11pm on Wednesday.
The youngest victim was a one-and-a-half-year-old.
The forewarning of impending disaster had come last month during Cyclone Tauktae, when the building developed a fissure.
Wednesday’s record downpour proved the final straw.
The top portion of the unnamed building gave way and crashed onto two single-storey structures.
The unlawful “builder” Rafiq Siddiqui lost nine members of his family, including his wife, his brother and his wife, and their six children.
Siddiqui and a contractor, Ramzan Shaikh, have been booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
CM Uddhav Thackeray announced an ex-gratia sum of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased.
PM Narendra Modi also announced Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund for the kin of the dead, and Rs 50,000 each for grievously injured victims.
The CM, along with his son, tourism minister Aaditya Thackeray, mayor Kishori Pednekar and BMC commissioner I S Chahal visited Shatabdi Hospital in Kandivli, where the injured have been admitted.
Malwani police registered a case under IPC section 304 (2) of culpable homicide not amounting to murder against Siddiqui and a contractor, Ramzan Shaikh, who had constructed the building around eight years ago.
Additional police commissioner Dilip Sawant said, “The structure was constructed illegally.
It developed a visible crack during the recent cyclone and collapsed on Wednesday.
We registered a case against the two and arrested Ramzan Shaikh on Thursday.” An adjoining three-storey building appeared shaky and was evacuated.
The collector’s office and BMC blamed each other for not having demolished the illegal structure.
It was built on the collector’s plot, whereas the BMC is the planning authority.
Wednesday night’s collapse followed a day of torrential rain.
Horrified neighbours heard a loud thud and saw the building go down.
They rushed to rescue survivors from the debris before the fire brigade arrived, whose officials then took over the task.
Through the night, rescuers pulled out 18 people who were rushed to Shatabdi Hospital.
Only seven managed to survive.
Of them Marikumari Hirangana, 30, was in critical condition.
The body of one victim, a milk shop owner who had his ship in the illegal building, was found on Thursday.
He, along his son, had tried to escape when the structure tilted a few seconds before it came down.
While the son sustained serious injuries in the leg and is in hospital, he told police his father may have got trapped in the debris.
Ten of the victims were from the illegal building, while the other two were from the structure it crashed on.
Of the 12 killed, eight were minors, with the youngest being 1.5 years old.
The video of a child being pulled out from the ruins went viral and showed rescuers trying to remove mud from her body.
Soyat Shaikh and his mother Rubina were having dinner when the three-storey building collapsed onto their house.
They were trapped inside.
He said, “Nothing was visible.
Somehow, we pushed the door open and managed to come out.
We then pulled out others who were living on upper floors.” Sangram, who was hanging about with his friends, said, “The trapped people were screaming for help.
We rushed forward and began to remove the rubble.
Through the bricks, I saw the hair of a woman and managed to pull her out.
I lifted her on my shoulders to the main road, where people shifted her to hospital in an autorickshaw.
I feel happy to learn that she survived.” Officials said that save for the ground floor, the upper storeys were illegal and built without a care for structural stability.
The BMC said the structure came under the collector’s land and therefore did not figure on its list of dilapidated buildings.
A senior fire brigade officer said rescue operations were hampered as it was not possible to take heavy machinery through the narrow alley.
“However, by Thursday morning, we managed to clear the rubble and have accounted for all survivors,” he said.
As the opposition BJP criticised the BMC and state government, mayor Kishori Pednekar said, “These are illegal structures, and they have not come up after 2020 (the MVA government was formed in November 2019).
The previous government could have acted against them.
People have lost their family members, one should understand their suffering and we should come together to resolve this issue.”