Thane, Aug 7 (IANS) An old, two-storey building collapsed in Maharashtra's Thane district on Sunday, killing the landlord, his wife and one other person, while six others are believed to be trapped under the debris, officials said.
The building, Mahadev Nivas, located at Hanuman Tekdi area of Bhiwandi town suddenly crashed around 7 a.m., catching the handful of occupants unawares, said Bhiwandi city police station official Ravindra Patil.
The local fire brigade and disaster management teams from Thane and Kalyan rushed to the crash site and managed to rescue four persons from the debris while a search is on for anther six feared trapped.
The deceased have been identified as landlord Sajjanlal Mahadev Gupta, 60, his wife Sitodevi Sajjanlal Gupta, 55, and Dhaniram B. Thakur, 50, according to Patil.
Some time ago, the 35-year-old building was declared as "dangerous" and an evacuation notice served on residents, but many them ignored it, said local legislator Kapil Patil.
While water supply was cut sometime ago, the civic authorities were planning to disconnect the power to the building soon.
This is second building crash in a week in Bhiwandi, which is around 35 km north of Mumbai and battered by heavy rains in the past few days.
Last Sunday (July 31), a building crash in the town's Gaibinagar had claimed nine lives and another 10 were injured.
