Under-construction wall caves in at Kanjurmarg, 2 dead

A 20-year-old labourer was killed and another is trapped under debris, after an under construction wall collapsed on Saturday morning in Kanjurmarg’s Karve Nagar.

A 20-year-old labourer was killed and another is trapped under debris, after an under construction wall collapsed on Saturday morning in Kanjurmarg’s Karve Nagar.

Rescue workers carry the body of one of the labourers killed after an under-construction wall caved in; Rescue operations lasted seven hours. (Prashant Waydande)

After rescue operations that lasted seven hours, fire brigade personnel were removing looking for the second worker until the time of going to press.

The wall came crashing down at 9.30am, when the two labourers were working on an underground tank in a building on the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli link road. The contract labourers were deshuttering the outside of a retaining wall of an underground tank, when the wall caved in and trapped them.

The accident took place at the MMRDA Complex . The victim, Indrajeet Chavan, was rushed to the Rajawadi hospital, but doctors said he had died .

“Locals said there was a second labourer, identified as Mahesh Dashrath, who is still likely to be trapped ,” the disaster control room told HT.

“The fire brigade team is facing some difficulty in rescue work because the space is narrow and the pit is 20 feet deep and there is no approach road for JCBs. The police are investigating ,” said Dilip Kawathkar, the joint project director, MMRDA.

This is the second such incident in a week where labourers have lost their lives while working on under-consrtuction buildings, highlighting lack of safety measures undertaken. Last week, six workers lost their lives after a dilapidated under-repair building collapsed in Kamathipura.