Two men, aged 60 and 36, were feared buried under debris after the slabs of a house under construction gave way in the Milan Garden area of northeast Delhi’s Harsh Vihar on Sunday evening, police said. Rescue teams were still digging through the rubble late into the night, and no casualties had been officially confirmed.
New floor was being added to an old house
According to police, the owners were adding a floor on top of an old single-storey house built on a plot of about 200 square yards. A resident said a freshly cast slab came down on the older roof beneath it. The Delhi Fire Services said it got the call at 6.46 pm and sent at least five fire tenders.
Teams from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Delhi Police, Civil Defence and the Delhi Disaster Management Authority joined the search. Delhi minister Kapil Mishra said around 47 NDRF personnel were at work. Police said the lane is so tightly packed that it was initially hard even to tell which structure had fallen, and the NDRF brought in a dog squad to help locate anyone under the debris.
Two people are suspected to be trapped, but there is no confirmation yet.
Sandeep Lamba, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police
Fire officials said the two missing men are a contractor and his father. Their relatives fear they are under the rubble because their phones cannot be reached. Some family members complained that the rescue was moving too slowly and began clearing debris with their own hands.
Ministers visit, owner traced
Ministers Ashish Sood and Kapil Mishra visited the site during the night. Sood said the government stood with the affected families and that anyone found responsible, whether in the municipal corporation or any Delhi government department, would face strict action.
Police said the owner of the building has been identified and traced, and legal proceedings have begun. They said the cause of the collapse, and whether the construction had the required approvals, are still being looked into.
A pattern of collapses
The incident adds to a series of building collapses in Delhi this year that have raised questions about weak enforcement of construction rules. On October 7, at least four people were killed in New Seemapuri when a building came down while demolition work using vibrating machines was under way next door. On September 6, a multi-storey boys’ hostel collapsed, killing seven people, including five Delhi University students. On May 30, six people died in a collapse in south Delhi’s Saidulajab. Unauthorised construction was suspected in the last two cases.
What happens next
The search will go on until the debris is fully cleared and the two men are found. Police are expected to check the building’s approvals and the work that was being done on Sunday, which will decide what charges the owner and others could face.
