The toll in what was officially christened as the "sandwich collapse" of a seven-storey building at Shil-Phata of Mumbra's Daighar area, near Thane, mounted to 49 on Friday evening, even as the Maharashtra Government ordered the suspension of a deputy municipal and a senior police inspector and ordered a high-level probe into the tragic incident.
On a day when a pall of gloom descended ironically on Mumbra's lucky compound area where an unauthorised building had caved in like a proverbial pack of cards on Thursday evening trapping 120-odd residents from under the huge collapsed slabs, the National Disaster Management Force (NDMF) and Thane fire brigade personnel recovered 35 more bodies and rescued 61 from under the debris.
The collapse toll, which rose to 49 at around 9 pm, may further go up. Among those killed were nine women and eleven children.
As many as 36 persons injured in the mishap are undergoing treatment at two Thane hospitals, while five seriously wounded have been shifted to JJ Hospital and Sion Hospital in Mumbai.