Behrampore: An elderly couple died and a relative was injured when their two-storey mud house collapsed in Sekhpara village in Murshidabad’s Bharatpur area on Friday afternoon following heavy rain.Syed Farhan Alam, 64, and his wife Jahanara Begum, 60, were buried under debris after a wall caved in.Rescue teams using an excavator pulled them out, but both died — Alam shortly after being extracted and Jahanara at Kandi Subdivision Hospital.A relative, Syed Manoar Ali, was injured when another section of the wall collapsed as he tried to save himself.State panchayat and rural development minister Dilip Ghosh, speaking at a review meeting in Behrampore, expressed condolences and linked the tragedy to alleged irregularities in housing schemes under the previous administration, claiming lapses in Awas Yojana allotments had left many families in substandard structures.He said irregularities had been identified in over 70,000 allotments and subsidies recovered from 12,500 ineligible beneficiaries, with the deadline for revised beneficiary lists extended to Aug 31.
