“All of us rushed to the spot only to find tonnes of rubble in the place where the building once stood,” said Sanjit, who came to the city from Midnapore district in West bengal.
Standing outside the Holy Spirit Hospital in Andheri, 28-year-old Sanjit Mandal looked visibly shaken. Around 5.30 pm on Tuesday, he was standing outside a two-storey under-construction building at Royal Palms in Aarey Milk Colony, Goregaon (East), when he suddenly heard a loud crash.
“All of us rushed to the spot only to find tonnes of rubble in the place where the building once stood,” said Sanjit, who came to the city from Midnapore district in West bengal.
Sanjit’s uncle Vinay Mandal, 40, and his nephew Raju, 22, were plastering the walls of the building when the floor beneath them gave way. “I could hear them scream for help and rushed in with some of the workers. It took us half an hour to dig out Vinay, and another 45 minutes to reach Raju,” said Sanjit. The construction worker, along with his friends Munna Chowdhary and Shamsher Ali, were among the first to plunge into the rescue act.
While Vinay fractured his arm, Raju sustained severe chest injuries. “I was buried deep beneath the rubble, with a load of debris on my chest,” said Raju, lying on a bed at Holy Spirit Hospital.
Vijay Mandal, Vinay’s brother, died on the spot. Sanjit’s cousins Ratan, Sushil and Tapan Mandal were still buried under the debris at the time of the report going to press.
“We had been working on this site for the past five months. We were paid about Rs 110 for eight hours a day,” said Sanjit. “About 15 of us are from the same village, and used to sleep inside the building. Had this happened at night, all of us would have died.”
According to Vinay, the construction work was nearing completion, and so, the bamboo scaffoldings supporting the ceiling had been taken off. “The building was probably overloaded towards one side, which could have resulted in the collapse,” said Raju.
‘Uneven base may have caused it’
BMC officials said the structure was located on a hilly terrain and might have caved in due to lateral pressure. B V Late, assistant engineer, of the P South ward, said: “Prima facie, we have complained against the developer and the contractor. The building proposal department of the BMC were expected to submit a report on the causes of collapse.” The civic body allowed the structure to come up under the tourism license, said Late.
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