Nearly 48 hours after the building collapse at Shil-Phata in Mumbra’s Daighar locality, the Thane police on Saturday finally arrested two builders who constructed the sub-standard structure without any official sanction. The authorities have pegged the final toll to 74.
On a day when the National Disaster Management Force (NDMF) and Thane fire brigade personnel completed the debris clearance, the police arrested the two builders, Jamil Qureshi and Salim Shaikh, who had been absconding ever since the “sandwich collapse” of the still-incomplete building located in Mumbra’s lucky compound on Thursday.
While Quershi was arrested from Uttar Pradesh’s Siddarthnagar district bordering Nepal, Shaikh was detained at Thane. Both have been booked under sections under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 337 and 338 (causing hurt by endangering life or personal safety of others) of IPC.
Sources said that police were contemplating arresting seven more persons, including partners of two builders, contractors and architects, involved in construction of sub-standard building built at a rapid pace.
“While we have already identified the persons whom we want to book along with builders, it would be a matter of time before we placed them under formal arrest,” officer said.
The arrest have come in wake of suspension of Deputy Municipal Commissioner Deepak Chavan of Thane Municipal Corporation and senior police inspector KP Naik of Shil Phata-Daighar police station for dereliction of duty.
Given that the Congress-led DF Government has come under severe flak from various quarters for its lack of initiative to check the large-scale unauthorised constructions at Mumbra, one should not be surprised if more heads in the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) roll in the coming days.
Thane Municipal Comm
issioner RA Rajeev has gone on record, saying that 90 per cent of the structures in Mumbra are illegal. Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president Manikrao Thakre said that responsibility to deal with illegal constructions in area lay with local authorities. He was indirectly laying blame at Shiv Sena-BJP alliance-ruled TMC.
After debris clearance operation ended around 12 noon, the Regional Disaster Management Control (RDMC) pegged the total deaths in the building collapse at 74. The dead comprised 33 men, 23 women, and 18 children.
NDMF commandant Alok Awasthi - who led the rescue and debris clearance operation - said that his team had wound up its operation after having established that there was no likelihood of their either rescuing persons or recovering more number bodies from under the debris.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan has expressed deep shock and grief over the rising death toll in the seven storey building collapse in Thane.
The Governor went onto convey his condolences to the family members of those killed in the mishap and wished speedy recovery to the injured. “We have to make sure that such tragedies do not occur in future,” he said.