Thane: A man and a woman have been killed while at least 22 others are feared trapped after a residential building collapsed at Bhiwandi town in Thane, the home district of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, on Saturday afternoon, Regional Disaster Management Unit officials said.
At around 1 p.m., a 10-year-old ground-plus-three-storey building collapsed in the Vardhaman Compound in Wall Village on the outskirts of Bhiwandi.
Soon afterwards, the district and police officials as well as medicos, fire brigade and Thane Disaster Response Force and other agencies rushed for the rescue and relief operations.
Union Minister of State for Panchayati Raj, Kapil Patil, who represents the Bhiwandi Lok Sabha constituency, also rushed to the spot, along with Collector Ashok Shingare and other officials.
By Saturday evening, the rescue teams managed to bring out 11 injured persons alive from the debris and admitted them to the local government hospital.
The rescuers have retrieved two bodies so far – a woman named Laxmidevi R. Mahato (26) and a man named Navnath Sawant (40) – and handed them over to the police for autopsy and other formalities.
Another at least 22 persons are still feared buried under the rubble, and frantic efforts are on to extricate them.
