The death toll in the building collapse incident in Maharashtra's Raigad district rose to 15 on Wednesday morning.
News Agency ANI reported the death toll had gone up to 16 including 7 males and 9 females as of Wednesday morning. The rescue operations are still on and one person is still missing.
Taking to Twitter, Director General of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) SN Pradhan informed that 19 people are missing as per the district administration.
A five-storey residential building collapsed in Maharashtra's Raigad district on Monday evening. Following which, the local administration and NDRF are carrying out search and rescue operation which has been going on for more than 24 hours now.
Four-year-old Mohammed N. Bangi was pulled out amid cries of joy and applause on Tuesday afternoon from under the rubble of a five-storey building that collapsed a day earlier in Mahad town, police officials said.
Even as teams of NDRF, SDRF, Raigad Police and Mahad fire brigade dug into the rubble to detect and dig out the trapped victims, early on Tuesday morning, the rescuers noticed the movement of a tiny leg between two broken pillars with tonnes of debris dangerously strewn all around, and one NDRF man rushed to pull him out.
Just then, Mohammed responded with a cry, indicating he was alive and apparently well, which was heartening for the rescue teams, said a Raigad Police official at the site.
The teams immediately swung into action and using metal cutters, they managed to slice through the pillars, carefully shifting the debris around using JCBs and finally reached the terrified, crying boy lying beneath.
Maharashtra Minister Vijay Wadettiwar on Tuesday announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 5 lakh to the family of each person killed in the Raigad building collapse incident.
An FIR was registered against five people earlier on Tuesday at Mahad city police station over the building collapse in a residential area of Mahad, Raigad district.
On this, Wadettiwar said, "We will not spare people responsible for this collapse. They murdered innocent people. Quality of construction material is very poor and is breaking with hands." According to the police, the FIR has been registered under Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 304-A (causing death by negligence), 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life), 338 (causing grievous hurt by act endangering life) and 34 (acts by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The offence was registered against builder Farooq Kazi, RCC consultant Bahubali Dhamne and architect Gaurav Shah, a police official said.
(With inputs from PTI, ANI and IANS)
