At least seven persons were killed and one person was injured after slabs of a ground-plus-five-storey building collapsed at Ulhasnagar in Thane district on Friday night, a civic official said.
The tragedy struck the 26-year-old Sai Shakti Building with 29 flats, in the Nehru Chowk area of the town at around 9 pm.
Locals said that there were some sudden rumbling sounds, vibrations and then the massive crash of the slabs from the living room areas of the building.
The slab of the fifth floor of the Sai Siddhi building in the Nehru Chowk area collapsed, causing the slabs below to crash too, said Santosh Kadam, chief of the Regional Disaster Management Cell of Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC).
“Around 9 pm, the drawing-room slabs of five flats – right from the top floor up to the bottom one – caved in. On being alerted, the personnel of the RDMC and the Thane Disaster Response Force (TDRF) rushed to the scene and launched a search and rescue operation,” Kadam said.
“With the recovery of one more body from the debris, the fatality count in the incident has now gone up to seven. Three women, as many number of men and one boy died in the mishap,” Kadam said.
The deceased belonged to two families residing in the building, he added.
The operation was called off at 12.46 am on Saturday following the recovery of the seventh body, the official said.
The deceased were identified as Punit Bajomal Panjwani (17), Dinesh Bajomal Panjwani (40), Deepak Bajomal Panjwani (42), Mohini Bajomal Panjwani (65), Krishna Induchand Bajaj (24), Amruta Induchand Bajaj (54) and Lovely Bajaj (20), he added.
Surjitt Sahani
