Gurugram building collapse: Death toll rises to 2; construction company’s MD booked

Gurugram: A body was pulled out from under the rubble of a partially collapsed apartment building here on Friday, taking the death toll in the incident to two, officials said.

Police have booked the builder of Chintels Paradiso, the residential complex where the incident occurred on Thursday night, and the construction contractor for negligence.

The district administration has ordered an inquiry into the matter, officials said. Residents staged a protest over the incident and were pacified by Gurugram Deputy Commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav who assured them that action would be taken in the matter.

The gates of the housing complex have been sealed by police.

Chintels India on Friday said the company is cooperating with the local authorities on the ”unfortunate” incident and would conduct a structural audit of the entire project.

”This is an extremely unfortunate incident and we have taken it very seriously as the safety of our residents is our utmost concern. Upon preliminary investigations, we have come to know that the incident occurred during renovation work by a contractor being carried out by a resident in his apartment,” Chintels India Managing Director Prashant Solomon said in a tweet.

Of the two dead, the body of Sunita Srivastava was recovered on Friday while another resident Ekta Bhardwaj (31) died on Thursday night.

Sunita Srivastava’s husband, Arun Kumar Srivastava, who was trapped under the building’s debris was rescued and hospitalised. His leg was stuck under the debris and the rescue coconut oil to pull his feet out.

Arun Kumar Srivastava, a 1986-batch IRSE officer, is a Central Warehouse Corporation MD. His treatment was started on the spot. Both his sons are in US and his father-in-law was the chief engineer in the irrigation department in Patna, a railway official said.

The builder and the construction contractor have been booked on a complaint lodged by Ekta Bhardwaj’s husband Rajesh Bharadwaj, the officials said.

Gurugram Deputy Commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav said, ”A special inquiry team has been constituted and it will look into the allegations of negligence. Rescue operations are underway.” The officials said the dining room floor of a sixth-floor apartment at Chintels Paradiso housing complex in sector 109 first came down, triggering the collapse of roofs and floors directly under it, till the first floor.

Teams from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) are carrying out rescue works. Earth-moving machines and a fire brigade vehicle with an elevated platform have deployed.

Rajesh Bharadwaj, a resident of Block-D of the complex, in his complaint, said, ”I got a call from my son Yatharth Bhardwaj that the ceiling of some floors of our tower have collapsed. In the incident my wife suffered injuries. She passed away around 7 pm.” He said that after he came from office, he saw that the ceiling of the sixth and seventh floors had collapsed. ”Rescue and police teams were working on the spot. After removal of debris, my wife’s body was recovered and taken to hospital,” Bharadwaj said.

”This incident has happened due to negligence and substandard construction work done by MD (managing director) of Chintels group Ashok Saloman and contractor of construction. There could be more fatalities and injuries to other flat resident of D-tower kindly take necessary legal action against the accused,” he said in his complaint.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Deepak Saharan said, ”FIR has been registered and probe is on. Action will be taken as per the law”. The builder and construction contractor have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 304A (causing death by negligence) and 34 (common intention) at the Bajghera police station. Deputy Commissioner Yadav had told reporters on Thursday that construction work was underway on the sixth floor when the floor collapsed. He said third to sixth floors of the building were vacant and people were living on the first and second floors.

Local residents have said Tower D, part of which collapsed, was built in 2018. The complex has three other towers. The 18-floor Tower D has four-bedroom apartments.

The housing complex management has blamed the disaster on ”negligence” during repairs for the ”extremely unfortunate incident”.

”Upon preliminary investigations, we have come to know that some negligence in repair work done by the contractor in an apartment led to this incident,” it said, offering condolences to the ”affected families”.

The management said it is cooperating fully with the authorities.