On Sunday afternoon, Nitesh Chib had just finished lunch in his room at the HostelDaze PG when, within moments, the building came crashing down. Chib and his friend were trapped under the rubble for over an hour.
Recounting the horror of the day the PG building collapsed in Delhi’s Satya Niketan, Chib, a second-year B.Com student at Delhi University, told NDTV that he and his friend were rescued from under the rubble after about an hour and a half.
Chib said his friend managed to send his WhatsApp location and SOS messages to friends, who then alerted the rescue teams. The two were eventually pulled out from under the debris – numb, injured and bleeding.
#NDTVExclusive | NDTV’s @Somyajaiswal__ speaks to a survivor of Satya Niketan Building Collapse on the tragedy, and more
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“My whole body was numb. I could not feel anything. I realised I was bleeding. I came to my full senses a while later in the hospital,” Chib told NDTV.
Read | Delhi Building Collapse: ‘Greedy’ For Rental Income, Owners Built Extra Floors
Chib said the students living in the PG had never imagined that the building was so weak that one day it could simply collapse.
“We never realised that the building was so weak. It appeared fine from the outside. There were no cracks in the walls or any signs of an impending disaster. There was some work going on in the basement for over a week. Then, suddenly, the building just crashed.”
Now lying in his bed, recovering from his injuries and the trauma of what happened, Chib has an appeal for the government: enforce safety rules strictly and inspect such buildings regularly.
“Students who come to Delhi to study have no choice but to stay at such PGs. It is for the government to ensure that safety rules are followed.”
Seven people, including five students, were killed and several others were injured when the PG building collapsed on Sunday.
Read | Debris In Basement, Wall Removed: What Led To Delhi Building Collapse
According to the FIR, the owners were aware that the building’s old foundation was not capable of bearing the additional weight. Despite this, they allegedly went ahead with the construction of more floors.
The FIR registered in the case states that the owners, Hariram Bansal alias Gupta and his brother, allegedly constructed four additional floors on top of the old structure, driven by the desire to earn more through rental income.
The FIR states that the additional floors and construction placed immense stress on the building’s structural integrity and load-bearing capacity, pushing the decades-old structure beyond its limits.
