Two people were killed and another was injured on Thursday morning after a portion of a three-storey building under construction collapsed in Delhi's Chawri Bazaar area, in the heart of Old Delhi, triggering a large rescue operation as officials feared more people could be trapped under the debris.
The collapse happened at around 9.50 am in Gali Sitara, Sheesh Mahal, a short distance from the Chawri Bazaar Metro station, at a time when the old city's markets were filling up with shoppers ahead of Diwali.
Delhi Police told ANI that two people had died in the incident and one person was injured. The Delhi Fire Services received a call about the collapse at around 9.50 am from the Paiwalan area, and at least six fire units, including water tenders and rescue vehicles, were rushed to the spot.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) joined the operation, and senior officers from the police, the fire services and the civic agencies reached the site to supervise the rescue work.
Rescue teams worked through the morning to clear the rubble and check whether anyone else was buried beneath it. Two bodies were pulled out from the debris by a Delhi Fire Services rescue team, officials said. Four people had been taken to hospital by local residents before the fire teams arrived.
The identities of those who died had not been established by the time the first reports came in, and officials said further details about the circumstances leading to the collapse were still awaited.
Eyewitnesses described a sudden and terrifying collapse. Mohd Nayeem, a local resident, told ANI that people in the area were jolted by a loud crashing sound at around 9 am or 9.30 am. "Three or four lintels had already been cast, and they all collapsed at once," he said.
"One of the injured labourers said there were about three or four people there. We saw a body being taken out. This building was under construction for the last three to four months."
His account suggested that construction workers were inside or around the structure when it came down, which is why officials feared the number of casualties could rise as the debris was cleared.
The building was a three-storey structure that was still being built. What caused it to fail was not immediately known. Officials did not say on Thursday morning whether the construction had the necessary permissions, who owned the building, or whether any structural warning signs had been noticed before the collapse. Those questions are likely to be central to the investigation that follows, as they have been after every similar incident in the capital.
The timing of the collapse added to the urgency of the rescue effort. Chawri Bazaar and the adjoining Chandni Chowk are among Delhi's oldest and busiest market quarters, and the lanes around the Metro station are crowded through the day. In the run-up to Diwali, the rush is heavier still, with shoppers, porters, handcarts and delivery vehicles filling the narrow streets.
Rescue vehicles had to make their way through that congestion to reach Gali Sitara, and the crowds gathered at the spot added to the difficulty of the operation.
The incident quickly drew a political reaction. Aam Aadmi Party leader Saurabh Bharadwaj attacked the Rekha Gupta government and raised questions over building safety audits and alleged corruption in enforcement by the civic departments. He pointed to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and asked why repeated collapses had not led to stronger checks on construction in the old city.
The criticism set the tone for what is likely to become a wider argument about who is responsible for keeping Delhi's buildings safe.
That argument has flared up repeatedly in recent months, because the Chawri Bazaar collapse is the fourth fatal building collapse in Delhi in roughly two months. Only days earlier, two men were killed when two slabs of a building gave way in the Milan Garden area of northeast Delhi.
That incident occurred during the construction of an additional floor above an old house, when a portion of the existing roof reportedly collapsed and brought the newly constructed slab down with it.
Earlier, on October 7, a four-storey building collapsed in the Seemapuri area of northeast Delhi, killing three people, including a child. Eight others were rescued from the debris and taken to the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital in Tahirpur for treatment. And on September 6, a five-storey paying guest accommodation collapsed in south Delhi's Satya Niketan, killing seven people.
That collapse was reportedly linked to basement excavation work and waterlogging following heavy monsoon rain, and it raised serious concerns about building safety and construction oversight in the area.
The pattern in these incidents is grimly familiar. In each case, an old or partly built structure came down during construction work or after alterations, and in each case the questions that followed were about permissions, supervision and enforcement. Old Delhi, in particular, is full of ageing buildings that have been extended floor by floor over the years, often in lanes too narrow for heavy machinery and too crowded for easy inspection.
The combination of old structures, added floors and weak oversight has proved deadly again and again.
Building safety in the capital is the responsibility of a chain of agencies, with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi at the centre. The corporation is supposed to approve building plans, inspect construction and act against unauthorised structures and dangerous buildings. But enforcement has long been patchy, and residents and experts have repeatedly pointed to unauthorised construction, illegal additional floors and the failure to act on complaints as the root of the problem.
After each collapse, officials promise surveys of dangerous buildings and action against violators. The Chawri Bazaar incident will test whether those promises have made any difference on the ground.
For now, the immediate task is the rescue operation. NDRF teams and fire personnel continued to work at the site through the day, and officials said the search would go on until they were satisfied that no one else remained under the rubble. The number of casualties could change as the debris is cleared, and hospitals in the area were on alert for more injured people being brought in.
The police and the fire services are expected to record statements from the building's owner, the contractor and the workers who survived, and to examine the construction records. If the building was found to have been built without permission, or in violation of the approved plan, a case could follow. In past collapses, such inquiries have sometimes led to arrests and to orders for the demolition of similarly unsafe structures nearby.
Whether that happens this time will depend on what the inquiry finds.
For the families of the two people who died, and for the workers who were inside the building when it fell, the questions about regulation and responsibility will come later. On Thursday, their concern was far simpler: who was trapped, who had survived, and when the rescue teams would reach them. The identities of the dead were still to be formally established, and their families were still to be informed, even as the rescue work went on around them.
The collapse is also a reminder of the risks that construction workers in Delhi face every day. Many of them are migrants who live on or near the sites where they work, and they are often the first victims when a structure fails. Safety nets, helmets and proper scaffolding are frequently absent from small construction sites, and workers have little protection when a slab or a lintel gives way.
The injured labourer quoted by ANI was one of the lucky ones. Others, buried under tonnes of concrete and brick, were not.
As the rescue operation continues and the investigation begins, the city is left with the same questions it has asked after each of the recent collapses. How many more old and unauthorised buildings are at risk? Why do safety audits and enforcement drives not prevent these incidents? And who will be held accountable when they happen again? Until those questions are answered, the fear in Delhi's crowded old quarters is that the next collapse is only a matter of time.
(Reporting based on The Economic Times, The New Indian Express and The Statesman.)