One person was killed and 19 others injured on Wednesday, when the roof of a building housing Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) branch collapsed at Karmala in Solapur district of western Maharashtra.
At least 23 others were rescued from under the debris of a huge slab of a hospital located on the second floor of the building crashed onto the ground floor-bank branch at around 11 am. There were at least 19 injured among those rescued from under the debris.
Among those who had been trapped under the debris were several customers, bank employees and patients from the second floor hospital room. The incident happened within half an hour after the bank branch had opened. The police identified the person killed in the mishap as one Prashant Bagal, a clerk working with the bank.
Of the injured, eight persons were admitted to a hospital at Solapur while an injured woman and a boy have been taken to a hospital at nearby Akluj town.
“There were in all 30 persons inside the Bank branch when the collapse took place. The people from various government agencies and local citizens rescued those trapped under the debris,” a district police official said. The three-storey building, where the crash took place at the BoM branch located on the ground floor, is owned by one Rajesh Joshi, a resident of Mahendra Nagar at Karmala. The police and local fire brigade are trying to establish what contributed to the sudden collapse of a slab from the first floor-hospital onto the bank branch. Till the evening, there were no reports of any arrest.