NEW DELHI, July 12:
Six members of a family, including a two-year-old girl, died, while eight others were injured after a four-storey building collapsed in northeast Delhi’s Welcome area early Saturday, an official said.
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The deceased were identified as Abdul Matloob, 50, the owner of the building, his wife Rabia, 46, two sons Javed, 23, and Abdulla, 15, daughter Zubia, 27, and a two-year-old granddaughter Fozia. Their bodies were pulled from the debris and sent to the GTB Hospital, a senior police officer said.
Matloob’s two other sons — Parvez, 32, and Naved, 19 — Parvez’s wife Siza, 21 and their one-year-old son Ahmad, were among the injured.
Four residents of the opposite building — Govind, 60, his wife Deepa, 56, brother Ravi Kashyap, 27, and his wife Jyoti, 27 — also sustained injuries after debris struck their house.
Naseem Ahmed, a family friend of the deceased, said, “While Parvez is still getting treated, he has no idea about the deaths of his family members. This is a huge blow for him. They were very nice people. This shouldn’t have happened”.
He said all family members except Matloob had returned from Jaipur last evening after visiting his recently married youngest daughter.
The family, which runs a dry cleaning business, had moved to the 20-year-old building a few months ago, after their previous house in Gautampuri caught fire in February, he said.
“They had narrowly escaped the fire, but all the things they had bought for the younger daughter’s marriage were reduced to ashes,” Ahmed said.
Meanwhile, the moment they heard that a building had collapsed in their area, several locals rushed to the site and hunkered down to clean the rubble with their hands in the hope of rescuing its occupants.
According to the residents, the building housed an anganwadi on its ground floor, which was fortunately closed at the time of the collapse. While they mourned the deaths, several of them expressed relief that the incident did not occur during anganwadi hours as around 25 children typically attend the centre daily.
“Several kids from the neighbourhood came there regularly,” Zeeshan, a close friend of Javed and Parvez, said.
A senior police officer said they received information about the incident at 7.04 am, and when a police team reached the spot, they found that three storeys of the building had collapsed. (PTI)
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