HC orders judicial probe into case

The Bombay high court on Friday initiated a judicial inquiry into the building collapse incident in Malwani area of Mumbai, which claimed 12 lives. It said that the incident proved that there existed absolute lawlessness in the municipal wards in Mumbai as well as its adjoining areas.

At least 12 people, including eight children, were killed and seven others injured after two floors of a three-storey residential building collapsed on an adjoining single-storey house at

Malwani in suburban Mumbai late on Wednesday night. A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G S Kulkarni directed the inquiry commissioner to submit the preliminary report of the incident by June 24. The bench said that it had been immensely pained by the incident, in which eight innocent children lost their lives.the court said that those in-charge of the concerned municipal ward must be held accountable.

It further noted that between May 15 and June 10 this year, four incidents of building collapse were reported in Mumbai and its adjoining areas, in which a total of 24 people died.

“What is happening? How many lives will be lost? What type of buildings are these? Were they identified as dangerous or illegal, but not demolished or were they not identified?” HC said. “You (municipal authorities) can’t play with lives of people. We have to hold those in-charge of the concerned ward responsible. Eight innocent children died on the first day of the rains,” it said. The HC said that there was no will among the civic officials to check the instances of illegal construction, or to demolish illegal structures.