illegal all the way: Thane building collapse toll mounts to 58

Mumbai: Amidst scathing criticism of corruption and negligence, the Maharashtra government on Friday assured a probe by the Additional Chief Secretary into the Thane building collapse and also suspended the deputy commissioner of the municipality and a senior police inspector.

Meanwhile, the toll in Thursday's collapse of the building mounted to 58 as the rescuers armed with sensor-fitted equipment were still looking for survivors and bodies in the massive debris of bricks, mortar and twisted steel.Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan told the State Assembly that if the building was found constructed on forest land, action would be taken against the Range Forest Officer and also against police officers if they were found to have colluded.

As rescue operations continued at the crashed building site, Chief Minister Chavan, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Home Minister RR Patil visited the spot. A Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) legislator from the area Ramesh Patil alleged that the municipal commissioner did not pay heed to his complaints about the building being unauthorised and unfit for occupation.

While civic officials admitted that the building was illegal, they shifted the blame to builders who, they claimed, went ahead with the construction despite not having relevant permissions.A Civic sources also said that sub-standard material was used in construction of the building and that it had no occupancy certificate.

Officials said the building was raised within four months and had been functional since December.A As a precautionary measure, another adjacent building, also developed by the same builders, was evacuated on Thursday night.A Local activist Mangal Patil had also registered repeated complaints with the Thane Municipal Corporation about the unauthorised structure, but to no avail. Speaking to mediapersons, Mangal Patil claimed that there were over 100 such buildings in the area.

A case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder has been registered against the two builders, Jamil Qureshi and Salim Shaikh, who have reportedly gone underground.

Man survives, but loses 13 of family Thane (PTI): Thirty-seven-year old Imran Siddiqui was lucky to survive and escape with some fractures, but 13 of his family members including his eight-month pregnant wife perished when the seven-storey illegal building suddenly turned into a massive heap of debris here. Siddiqui, originally hailing from Delhi came to Mumbai, sometime ago in search of a good job but little did he realise that his dreams of making it big in Mumbai would soon crash with a life-altering collapse. He lived in the ill-fated structure with his wife Shakila and around 15 of his cousins, 12 of whom were dead. Lying with fractured legs at the Kalwa Hospital here, he was inconsolable when Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan visited all the patients on Friday enquiring about their condition. Grief-stricken by the untimely death of his wife, who was in the family way, Siddiqui continued to recount the horror of the foetal damage, when the body of his wife was rushed to the hospital on Thursday evening.A The tragedy has left him so shocked that he was unable to remember the names of his killed relatives. "Hamare to sabhi log chale gaye. Ma, baap bhai behan, and bibi bhi. Muje kuch madad karo naa," (I have lost my entire family including my wife...Please help me) Siddqui urged Chavan when visited the patients.