5 of a family killed in building collapse
Five members of a family, including an eight-year-old girl, were killed and eight others were injured when the ceiling of a single-storeyed building in Mundka of west Delhi collapsed on Wednesday early morning, police said.
The ceiling of house number 144, Friends Enclave in Mundka collapsed at 7:30 am when some of the victims were sleeping and the rest were relaxing.
“We received a call around 7:30 am about a gas cylinder exploding at a house in Mundka. Four fire tenders were rushed to the spot. The team found that the ceiling had collapsed and many people were stuck under the rubble,” a fire official said.
After half and hour rescue operation, all the 12 people were taken out from the debris. They were rushed to the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital at Mangolpuri, where the doctors declared five dead. Eight people received injuries but four were discharged later in the day.
The dead have been identified as Supal Singh, 60, Santosh, 18, Avinash,12, Hema, 8, and Pawan, 32. The injured are Badri Singh, 35, Pushpa Devi, 30, Devo Mandal, 19, Ganesh Mandal, 23, Sujoy Mandal, 23, Mruganko, 22, Bittoo, 15, and Anjali, 12.
The police, after inspection of the spot, ruled out cylinder blast as a reason behind the incident and said that 'the ceiling might have collapsed after an explosion in a TV set in one of the rooms.
“There was some leakage from the gas cylinder, but it was not the reason behind the explosion. A blast in the television set kept in the room due to a short-circuit or a spark may be the reason.
The explosion was so powerful that the ceiling above the room and two adjacent rooms collapsed. We are currently investigating the matter,” Additional Commissioner of Police V Ranganathan told Deccan Herald.
The officer also highlighted that the building, which has six rooms, was structurally weak.
Supal Singh, a labourer and who hails from Simarayi village near Chapra in Bihar, was living on rent along with his family.
Another family, hailing from West Bengal, too lived there in a single room.
