An eight-year-old boy was killed, and a man was injured when a house collapsed in Nangloi in Delhi early Monday. Officials said the boy, Vansh, was critically injured, and taken to Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, where the attending doctor declared him brought dead. They said Sabir, 45, suffered minor injuries, and was given first aid at the site.
The Delhi Fire Service (DFS) said it received a distress call at 7.12 am, and dispatched four fire tenders to the spot. By 9.50 am, fire brigade personnel said the balcony of the first floor and the roof of the ground floor of the building collapsed, trapping two people under the debris. The cause of the structural failure is being investigated, said fire brigade officials.
This is the latest incident of building collapse in Delhi this year. On June 4, a two-storey commercial building undergoing renovation in Rohini’s D-12 Market collapsed, injuring at least one person. On May 17, three people were killed when a wall collapsed at an under-construction basement site, following heavy rainfall, at Arakashan Road in Paharganj.
On April 19, a four-storey residential building collapsed in Mustafabad in Northeast Delhi, killing 11 people, eight of whom were from the same family. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had then said that the building was around 20 years old and was an unauthorised construction. Delhi Police sources said some shops were being constructed on the ground floor, and the work underway likely caused the structure to weaken.
After the Mustafabad building collapse, MCD initiated a city-wide inspection of dangerous buildings. However, by late May, only 37 per cent of the targeted areas had been surveyed.
