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13 people were killed and 17 others injured when a two-storied structure housing an Irani restaurant located on a busy road in Secunderabad collapsed on Monday morning.
Most of the victims of this tragic incident were said to be the labourers and staff of the City Light Hotel as daily wage earners gather at the place in the morning to be picked up for work. Rescue operations, involving the removal of debris to save people feared to be trapped inside, are still on.
Teams recovered 12 bodies from the site while one person died in the hospital undergoing treatment, according to the police. The rescue teams have kept oxygen pipes into the debris to help those trapped stay alive till the building rubble is cleared.
The state government has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 7.5 lakh to the families of each of the deceased, besides ordering an inquiry into the cause of the collapse of this 50-year-old building.
The police registered a case of criminal negligence against the owners of the building who also own the restaurant.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) commissioner MT Krishnababu admitted that the building, though an old structure, was not found in the list of building structures they had identified and issued notices for demolition.
Constructing special ovens for the festival month of Ramazan on the upper floors by the hotel owners is suspected to be the immediate trigger for the collapse of the structure.
However, authorities have not made any conclusive statement in this regard.
Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and Opposition leader N Chandra Babu Naidu were among the VIPs who visited the accident site as well as Gandhi Hospital where the injured were being treated.
GHMC authorities usually attribute the delays in executing the demolition of old structures to court litigations. According to Krishna Babu, the GHMC had issued notices to 450 buildings while less than 20 structures were actually demolished.
CM directs officials to prepare Building policy
Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy asked the officials to evolve a suitable “Comprehensive Building Structural Stability Policy” to regulate such buildings in consultation with experts, structural engineers, the chief minister's office said in a statement.
