2 Held in India After Collapse of Building

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/world/asia/builders-arrested-in-india-after-scores-die-in-collapse.html

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MUMBAI, India (AP) — The police arrested two builders as rescue workers on Saturday finished a two-day search for survivors in the collapse of a residential building being constructed illegally here in India’s financial capital. At least 72 people were killed in the accident, the worst house collapse in the country in recent decades.

Another 70 people were injured when the eight-story building on forest land in Thane, a Mumbai suburb, caved into a mound of steel and concrete on Thursday evening, the police said. The dead included 17 children.

Thirty-six of the injured were still in city hospitals and the rest were discharged after medical treatment, said Sandeep Malvi, a spokesman for the local municipality.

The local police commissioner, K. P. Raghuvanshi, said the two builders had been taken into custody and would be formally charged after an investigation.

The police on Friday registered a case of culpable homicide against the builders — Salil, who uses one name, and Khalil Jamadar — the news agency Press Trust of India said. If convicted, they could be sentenced to as long a term as life in prison.

Rescue workers with sledgehammers, chain saws and hydraulic jacks worked through Friday night to break through the tower of rubble in their search for survivors, Dahi Phale, a police officer, said. Six bulldozers were brought to the scene.

Twenty bodies were recovered overnight and the rescue work ended at noon on Saturday after 42 hours, Mr. Malvi said.

Prithviraj Chavan, the top elected official of Maharashtra State, said that a government investigation had been ordered into the accident, and that a deputy municipal commissioner and a senior police officer had been suspended for dereliction of duty.

At the time of the collapse, 100 to 150 people were in the building. Many were residents or construction workers who were living at the site as they worked on it, Mr. Malvi said.

Officials of a nearby hospital, which was filled with the injured, searched in vain for the parents of a 10-month-old girl who was rescued after 12 hours.