Indian police make arrest after building collapse kills 17

MUMBAI — Indian police arrested the owner of a property in a building that collapsed in Mumbai on culpable homicide charges Wednesday as the death toll from the disaster rose to 17.

The arrest came as civic activists in India’s financial capital decried the latest deadly housing collapse, which shone a spotlight on poor construction standards in the Asian country.

“We have arrested Sunil Shitap and are questioning him regarding the alterations that led to the building collapse,” Deven Bharti, a joint commissioner of Mumbai police, told AFP.

Seventeen people, including a threemonth-old baby, were crushed under a pile of rubble when the four-storey building in the northern suburb of Ghatkopar gave way on Tuesday morning.

Police suspect that renovation work being carried out by Shitap to a private hospital on the ground floor caused the building, which housed several families in small apartments, to collapse.

Bharti said Shitap had been booked under three offenses, including culpable homicide not amounting to murder and causing grievous hurt by an act endangering the life or personal safety of others.

The death toll jumped to 17 on Wednesday after rescuers, using diggers to sift through the debris found several bodies during the night.

“Seventeen are dead and we have rescued 29 victims, eight of which have been admitted to hospital,” Sudhir Naik, a deputy commissioner for Mumbai’s civic administrative body, told AFP.