When neighbours rushed to the building collapse site in Delhi’s Seemapuri on Wednesday, they first located and rescued a three-year-old child crying next to his grandmother Salma, who was writhing in pain. The boy escaped with minor injuries and was discharged from the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital on Thursday. He has since been looking for his mother, Nusrat, 35, who was among those killed in the collapse.
“He is restless and constantly crying for his mother,” said his aunt, Shehnaz. “The boy is just three. He would not understand even if we tell him that his mother is dead. We cannot see him crying. God was kind enough to save his life but at the cost of his mother,” Shehnaz said.
Abdul Hasan, 37, the boy’s father, said he left home around 9am on Wednesday for his garment shop in central Delhi’s Gol Market, as his wife Nusrat, who was recuperating from surgery 20 days ago, and son slept. Around 3.30pm, Hasan’s brother-in-law, Sheikh Noor, called him to inform him about the building collapse and that his family was trapped.
Deep Dive
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Hasan rushed back home and found his son and in-laws were safe, but Nusrat was missing. Nusrat’s body was found around 3.30am on Thursday.
The couple, who were blessed with the boy after five years of their marriage, had shifted to the building a month ago because their house nearly 300 metres away is being reconstructed. Anwar, Hasan’s father-in-law and owner of the collapsed building, was supervising the construction work of his daughter’s house.
{{/usCountry}}The couple, who were blessed with the boy after five years of their marriage, had shifted to the building a month ago because their house nearly 300 metres away is being reconstructed. Anwar, Hasan’s father-in-law and owner of the collapsed building, was supervising the construction work of his daughter’s house.
{{/usCountry}}Noor said Nusrat’s son had a lucky escape and survived with just minor injuries to his legs. He added the boy was with his grandmother, Salma, on the ground floor at the time of the incident. Nusrat was climbing down the staircase to the first floor of the building from the second to give food to her son when the structure collapsed.
The body of Nusrat’s aunt, 60-year-old Hazra Bibi, was also pulled out on Thursday. Bibi’s body was found with the keys to her house that she locked before heading to meet her sister-in-law Salma. “The keys were in my wife’s right hand when her body was recovered from the debris. We do not know where the keys are now. The rescue teams have not given us the keys. They are now not allowing us to go to the site. Our neighbours gave us water and tea in the morning. They also offered us food, but I told them I am not hungry,” said Hazra’s husband, Sheikh Hamid, sobbing on a chair outside his locked ground-floor house in a cramped lane, some 100 metres away from the collapse site.
Hamid said his wife could have survived had she not thought about the safety of her 17-year-old grandson and others standing in the lane at the time of the building collapse. “Eyewitnesses told me that just before the building collapsed, my wife saw our grandson Ayaan standing in the lane. She screamed and asked him to run in the lane adjacent to the building. Ayaan told me that he ran into the lane. My wife ran towards the other lane which is in front of the building. But it was too late for her. The building collapsed towards the same lane, trapping her under it,” said Hamid.
Hazra is survived by her husband and four sons and two daughters. One of her sons, Sheikh Haider, 25, was arrested around a fortnight ago for possessing a knife, and has been in jail since. The other three sons, Sheikh Gaffar, 35, Sheikh Jabbar, 30, and Sheikh Sahil, 20, were out for work when the building collapsed.
The couple’s two daughters are married and live with their in-laws in Seemapuri and Vijay Nagar.
The search and rescue operation at the collapse site is continuing as locals have told the authorities that one or two are still feared trapped.
The collapse was the latest in a series of building-related tragedies to hit the Capital this year, bringing into focus enforcement failures surrounding construction and structural safety.
The building collapsed in the cramped lanes of New Seemapuri, where locals rushed to help firefighters clear debris from the side of an Eidgah, the only access point.
The first body, of a child, was being pulled from the debris at 7.20pm. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi said the building was at least 20-25 years old and stood in a jhuggi-jhopadi cluster under the jurisdiction of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board.