Two developers arrested; toll mounts to 74

Mumbai (PTI): Two developers involved in construction of an illegal building which collapsed in Thane district on Thursday were arrested on Saturday even as the death toll in the tragedy touched 74. "Builders Jamil Qureshi and Salim Shaikh were arrested from their hideouts on Saturday," Thane Police Commissioner K P Raghuvanshi said. Qureshi was nabbed from Uttar Pradesh, while Shaikh was apprehended from Thane, he said. Police had registered a case of culpable homicide against the builders, who were on the run since the incident. The seven-storey unauthorised building at Shil Phata in Mumbra in the district had come down crashing in a heap on Thursday evening, in the worst tragedy of its kind in Maharashtra, and by the time rescue operations were called off on Saturday afternoon, 72 people were dead. "Rescue operations have been called off. The death toll at present stands at 72 while 62 people have been pulled out alive," Thane Joint Commissioner of Police Vipin Kumar told reporters at the scene of the tragedy. According to the Regional Disaster Management Control (RDMC) sources, those dead include 22 women and 17 children. Of the 60 injured, 36 have been admitted to hospitals in Thane, Kalwa and Mumbra. The seriously injured have been shifted to J J and Sion Hospitals in Mumbai. Kumar said now an adjoining multi-storey structure, also constructed by the same builder illegally, was in the process of being pulled down. Thane Municipal Commissioner R A Rajeev had on Friday gone on record to say that 90 per cent of buildings in Mumbra area where Shil Phata, the scene of Thursday's tragedy is located, are illegal. Alok Awasthi, Commandant of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), which was rushed from Pune soon after the collapse, too confirmed that rescue efforts had been abandoned as there was no likelihood of presence of any bodies or survivors. "We have explored the area eight feet underneath the plinth and we are reasonably sure that there is nobody there," Awasthi, who led his team of 90 men who painstakingly rescued 62 people from the massive wreckage, said. Describing the operation as "complicated," Awasthi said because it was a "sandwich collapse", with floor lying over floor, it was a daunting task to remove debris from each storey to look for survivors. "We had to proceed very slowly as any mis-step would have pushed up the death toll," he said. The Government had on Friday suspended Thane Deputy Municipal Commissioner Deepak Chavan and Shil-Daighar Senior Police Inspector K P Naik for dereliction of duty and for allegedly colluding with the builders.

Toddler rescued after 29 hours Thane (PTI): Cheers greeted rescuers after they safely pulled out a 10-month-old baby alive from the rubbles, 29 hours after a seven-storey building collapsed on Thursday. Sadly, none of her family members were there to see the child's miraculous rescue on Friday. As nobody knows her name, she has been named 'Gudia' by the staff of Chhatrapati Shivaji Memorial Hospital at Kalva where she is undergoing treatment. 'Gudia' was lucky to have survived the tragedy which claimed 72 lives, including 22 women and 17 children, when the unauthorised building collapsed at Shil Phata in Mumbra near here on Thursday evening. "We call her Gudia as we don't know her name. She looks like a Gudia (doll) after all," said M Waghela, a hospital staff, while cradling the baby whose face is pockmarked with bruises. "She has had milk and is much better now. She survived by God's grace and with his grace we want her family to come and take her," said Waghela. Waghela said one of Gudia's neighbours has told hospital authorities that the toddler's mother and aunt used to stay in the building but no one has yet turned up to claim her. Another survivor Kutibi Shaikh, 65, was rescued from the rubble after being trapped for almost 30 hours. She was admitted to the CSM hospital late last night and is in shock but stable, doctors said.