Young girl dead in Delhi building collapse

NEW DELHI // The body of a girl was retrieved from a collapsed building in West Delhi on Sunday afternoon, the latest instance of shoddy construction costing lives in India.

Emergency workers had swarmed the site to rescue the girl, who was believed to be trapped under the debris of the building. She was identified only as a minor.

The four-storey residential building collapsed on Saturday night, killing at least five other people and injuring eight more. Six of the eight injured were discharged from hospital after preliminary medical treatment.

The building stood in a narrow lane in the Vishnu Garden area of Delhi.

Initial reports suggested that the building’s foundations had been weakened by an excavation at an adjacent plot of land, where construction on a new structure was ongoing.

“These buildings are really old and built by local, unqualified guys without any proper checks,” Dependra Pathak, a New Delhi police officer, told AFP.

Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, ordered an inquiry into the incident, asking for a detailed report within seven days.

“It is an unfortunate accident,” Jamail Singh, a Delhi legislator from Mr Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, said. “Because of Eid, residents of the building had probably gone to their villages, so the number of casualties, which could have been huge, was reduced.”

The building was the home of many denim jeans traders, which explained the numerous pairs of jeans found in the rubble, according to the Hindustan Times. The area around Vishnu Garden is a thriving marketplace of inexpensive clothes — including jeans — and families prospering from the trade have tacked on new floors and extensions to their homes and buildings.

Illegal and unregulated construction account for numerous building collapses in India every year.

Most infamously in recent years, in September 2013, a five-storey building in the region around the Mazagaon docks in Mumbai crumbled, killing 61 people.

Police reports found that a new mezzanine floor had been added to the building without permission, weakening its structure.

That building was owned by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Mumbai’s civic authority.

Dilip Shah, a property analyst in Mumbai, blames corruption for such accidents.

“When developers want to sanction building plans, they give bribes,” he said. “This way, they can slip poor quality material or bad plans past the authority. Again, when owners of buildings want to modify their structures illegally, they give bribes to the inspectors to get away with it.”

ssubramanian@thenational.ae