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On Thursday night, a residential building being constructed illegally collapsed, killing 47 people and injuring 70 more, according to The Associated Press. The property was being built on forest land in the Mumbai suburb of Thane. It was an eight-story building that caved in, according to police
“There may be (a) possibility people have been trapped inside right now,” local police commissioner K.P. Raghuvanshi said Friday.
Anywhere from 100 to 150 people were in the building when it collapsed. Most of them were residents or construction workers who were living at the building as they constructed it, according to a spokesman for the Thane government, Sandeep Malvi.
Three floors of the building still had to be searched as 20 people were still missing on Friday afternoon. R.S. Rajesh, an official from the National Disaster Response Force, was on the scene.
“All the three floors are sandwiched … so it’s very difficult for us,” he said.
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Police said that there were 17 children amongst the dead. Those who were injured suffered fractures, head wounds and spinal injuries. Four floors of the building were completed and were being occupied at the time of the collapse. Three other floors were completed, but not being lived in, when workers were adding the eighth floor, inspector Digamber Jangale said.
“The inquiry is ongoing. We are all busy with the rescue operation; our priority now is to rescue as many as possible,” Raghuvanshi said. He also noted that rescue workers pulled 15 people from the wreckage who were injured.
“Notices have been served several times for such illegal construction, sometimes notices are sent 10 times for the same building,” Malvi said.
A former top official from Mumbai, G.R. Khairnar, said that government officials who permitted the illegal construction should be prosecuted with the builders.
“There are a lot of people involved (in illegal construction) — builders, government machinery, police, municipal corporation — everybody is involved in this process,” he told CNN-IBN television.
