18-05-2025
Building owner booked after 3 killed in wall collapse at Delhi's Paharganj
The Delhi Police have booked the owner of an under-construction building after its wall collapsed, killing three people at Arakashan Road in Paharganj Saturday evening.
The wall collapsed at the basement site of a hotel following heavy rainfall. The police said the incident was reported via a PCR call at 6.20 pm. Upon arriving at the site, police and rescue teams found that the wall had collapsed, as the structure had weakened due to ongoing construction activities.
The deceased were identified as Prabhu, 65, the contractor overseeing the construction; Niranjan, 40, a construction worker; and Roshan, 35, another worker at the site. Prabhu was reportedly leading the basement construction project, with Niranjan and Roshan working under him.
In another wall collapse, a 35-year-old man died and his co-worker was injured while doing welding work in Outer North Delhi.
DCP (Outer North) Nidhin Valsan said police received information regarding a wall collapse in Prahladpur. The victims, Ashok and Sumit, 36, were taken to Maharishi Valmiki Hospital, where Ashok was declared dead on arrival.
These wall collapse incidents happened barely a month after a building in Northeast Delhi's Dayalpur collapsed following a dust storm in the early hours of April 19. The collapse killed 11 people, of whom eight were members of the family of a 2020 Northeast Delhi riots victim.
Chief Minister Rekha Gupta had then ordered a probe into the incident, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences to those who lost their loved ones and announced an ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF) for the next of kin of each deceased. The injured would be given Rs 50,000 each, he had said in a post on X.
President Droupadi Murmu had also expressed her condolences to all the affected families. Delhi minister Kapil Mishra and local MLA Mohan Singh Bisht had also visited the site. 'All these colonies are unauthorised. We will act against the MCD officials who cleared these houses,' Mishra had said.
