Greater Noida: Over 24 hours after a residential building in Greater Noida’s Shahberi village collapsed, a family of four was pulled out from under the debris. None of the family members who were in the house survived.
The recovery of the four bodies has taken the total death toll in the Greater Noida building collapse tragedy up to nine.
Meanwhile, friends and family of the deceased told News18 that they had to wait in the hospital for all of Thursday night before a doctor was available to carry out the postmortem. It was only around 9 am on Thursday, a full 36 hours after the tragedy, that the family could get the four bodies.
The Trivedis, a family of 5, had spent their life’s savings to buy a house big enough for their joint family. While Ram Trivedi was in Mainpuri on Tuesday, the day of the incident, his mother Rajkumari, wife Priyanka, brother Shivam and 1-year-old daughter Pankhuri were in their house. Ram and his extended family had held out hope till the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) teams were working to clear the rubble and search for survivors.
"My brother Shivam and I had bought the house for around Rs. 22 lakh. At the time, the broker Qasim had assured us that all was well with the building. If I had known this would lead to my entire family being obliterated, I would have not even gone near the building. Only on Saturday (July 14) we had the 'griha pravesh' (housewarming) ritual. We were so happy to finally have our own house,” he said.
Narendra Trivedi, Ram and Shivam’s uncle, said, "Shivam had just completed his MBA and started working. He was only 25-year-old. And poor Pankhuri had only recently turned 1. Even if these builders get away with this, God will never forgive them."
Ram Dubey, Shivam’s friend and colleague, said, "The bodies were recovered on Wednesday night and the decay had already started to set in. It had been over 24 hours when they were pulled out. We waited in the government hospital all night and there was nobody available to do the postmortem. It was only by the morning that we managed to get the bodies. They will now be taken to their hometown Mainpuri, where they will be cremated."
Nine people have been killed and at least a dozen are feared trapped under the debris of a six-storey building that collapsed in Greater Noida's Shahberi village late on Tuesday night. The building adjacent to it, which was under construction, also fell and around a dozen construction workers may be trapped inside the building. Four companies of the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) have been deployed at the collapse site. However, the rubble could not be entirely cleared even after over 36 hours of the incident.
Meanwhile, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya took stock of the incident and ordered the arrest of the builder and two of his associates. The Yogi government even announced an ex-gratia compensation of Rs. 2 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.
“District administration and NDRF teams are engaged in rescue and search operations. Some people are feared trapped in the rubble. Our thoughts are with the families of those who died in the incident,” Maurya told the press on Wednesday.
Pankaj Singh, BJP MLA from Noida, said, “It (the incident) is unfortunate. Illegal construction should be stopped and strict action should be taken against those responsible. Officers who overlooked everything should be held responsible and strict action should be taken against them too.”
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