Bellary building collapse: Rescue operations end

With no hopes of finding any survivor, the nine-day-long rescue operation has been called off at the site where a five-storeyed under-construction building collapsed leaving 28 people dead.

"We have stopped the rescue operations completely last night... it was nothing short of a miracle that a labourer Mallaiah was extricated alive from the debris yesterday," deputy commissioner B Shivappa told reporters here.

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team which along with personnel of army's Military Engineering Service, Bangalore, had taken up the rescue work in the past nine days, had returned to Pune, Shivappa said.

The building collapsed on an adjacent students hostel on January 26 killing eight persons and injuring 19. The toll mounted to 28 with the rescue teams pulling out more bodies in the subsequent days.

SP Seemanth Kumar Singh said the inquiry report into the incident revealed that soil testing was not carried out properly by the municipal authority and permission was granted for the construction in violation of the norms.

"Out of the 19 rescued people who were admitted to Vijaynagar Institute of Medical Sciences hospital, eight have already been discharged while 10 were still undergoing treatment," he said.