The body of a 40-year-old man was recovered from the debris of the collapsed building in Old Delhi’s Hauz Qazi in the early hours of Saturday, taking the death toll in the incident to three, police said.
With the latest recovery, five people have now been pulled out of the debris, including three who died and two who sustained injuries. Rescue operations were continuing at the site at the time of filing this report. The collapse has also raised questions about alleged negligence during construction, with the police arresting three contractors in the early hours of Friday. Fire personnel and other rescue teams had to rely largely on manually removing debris to reach those trapped beneath. Police are continuing their investigation into the circumstances leading to the collapse, including the alleged violations during construction and the role of the contractors and property owners.
In his complaint to the police, Firoz, a 37-year-old construction worker from Bihar who lives in Mandawali and survived the collapse, alleged that the contractors repeatedly disregarded workers’ concerns about the building’s structural stability.
The deceased was identified as Pankaj Sharma, a resident of Hanuman Nagar village in Bihar’s Khagaria district, deputy commissioner of police (central) Rohit Rajbir Singh said. Both injured workers have received medical treatment and are stable, officials said. The contractors allegedly ignored repeated warnings from workers about the poor quality of the construction materials and the structure’s inability to support another concrete slab, according to the first information report (FIR) registered in the case.
The collapse has also brought renewed scrutiny on the civic authorities, particularly after it emerged that Delhi Police had alerted the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) about construction activity at the property nearly five months before the incident. The rescue operation on Thursday was severely hampered by the extremely narrow lanes of the walled city, which prevented heavy machinery, including JCB excavators, from reaching the site of the collapse.
