New Delhi, November 16
The death toll in the building collapse at Lalita Park in Lakshmi Nagar reached 67 today and the numbers of injured were over 85. Rescue officials said the chances of survival of some people still believed to be trapped in the rubble of this concrete building were remote.

The police has registered a case under Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC against building owner Amrit Singh, who has a criminal background and went underground with his family members soon after the building came crashing down in a few seconds last night.

He was arrested on Tuesday from Geeta Colony. He is being questioned at Shakarpur Police station. Around 25 persons are still feared trapped in the debris.Officials of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are leading the operation to find out more bodies and survivors, if any. Most of the victims are from West Bengal.

“It is difficult for anybody to survive under the weight of the heavy concrete structure. If somebody is luckily trapped in a vacant space then we can hope for his survival,” said Joginder Singh, a senior member of civil defence team.The suspect collusion of government and municipal authorities in allowing buildings like these to come up invited angry reactions from victims’ kin and locals.

The authorities are now promising to take strong action against the accused builder, who raised the structure in violation of all norms, but they were blissfully unaware of his shenanigans for the last few years when he added more floors and numerous cubbyhole rooms to rent them out to poor migrants.

Angry local residents said Singh also owned an adjacent four-storeyed rundown building which housed over 100 daily-wagers. The authorities today sealed this building and evacuated residents of two other such structures besides the sealed one.

Though there is no definite information about the number of rooms in the building that collapsed or even the exact number of people living in it, locals said there were 10 to 12 small rooms in each floor and their residents could total to 250. The government estimate was more conservative as officials said there would be around 150 residents. Many inhabitants survived as they were not inside when it collapsed. Daily-wagers, rickshaw-pullers and other poor workers lived there, many with their families and many alone.

“The basement of the building was flooded with water since the monsoon. No municipal authorities ever asked the owner to clear the water even though they had announced that they would go to all houses due to the dengue menace,” said Umesh Yadav, who lost two of his kin in the incident.

New Delhi, November 16
A gamut of emotions runs across the face of Shankari (26), who at times grieves over the deaths of her little daughter and a brother and then plucks her courage to enquire about the whereabouts of her missing mother and other brothers.

Sitting forlorn at some distance from her in the rescue camp for building collapse victims’ kin is Urmila Haldar (11), whereabouts of her mother and two brothers, believed to be trapped in the building, are unknown. She had been told by consoling women that they were in hospital as they feared that she may not be able to accept the reality.

The devastating tragedy - the biggest of this nature in Delhi - has wiped out many families. Some children survived because they were playing outside while some others were lucky to have not returned from work.

The building full of cubbyhole rooms had mostly Bangla-speaking migrants as tenants, who paid Rs 300 for a bed to 2,200-3,000 for a room depending on their family strength. The men worked as rickshaw-pullers or did other menial jobs while women mostly worked as maids.