Ghaziabad: A 19-year-old man died and two others were injured after part of the ceiling of a hardware shop on the Delhi-Saharanpur main road collapsed in the Loni Border area in Ghaziabad on Monday. Police suspect that rain made the roof give way.The deceased Mukesh Kumar had been working at the store as a salesman for the past year. His elder brother Sushila Kumar said the store, Paras Hardware and Sanitary, was owned by Kunal Jain and Abhishek Jain. The building was in a dilapidated condition and on Aug 1, Mukesh had complained to them that the ceiling could collapse at any moment, but they ignored his warning and scolded him.Chief fire officer Rahul Pal said they were informed at 4.42pm Monday that the roof of the sanitation and hardware store had collapsed and a few people were trapped. Fire tenders posted near Loni Border police station for kanwar yatra, along with other tenders from Tronica City Fire Station and Vaishali, were dispatched to the store. “The first fire tender reached the scene at approximately 4.53pm,” Pal said. “We found the roof of the three-storey shop was made out of gattar patti — steel girders and concrete slabs — and the shop was heavily stocked with hardware goods.”When the roof gave way, the hardware stacked on the two other floors trapped three people. “With the help of police teams and local people, we were able to pull out two people immediately,” he said. They were sent to a nearby hospital and are in a stable condition. After almost half an hour, the fire unit managed to pull Mukesh out. He was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors declared him dead.Other girders and slabs of the entire building had also shifted out of place, and many slabs had cracks, through which goods and debris kept falling during the rescue and search operation. “However, with the help of the advanced life detector instruments and NDRF’s sniffer dogs, we ensured that no other person was trapped under the debris. The district administration has now sealed the building,” he said.Mukesh’s brother Sushila said the shop had no pillars or a cemented roof and the iron girders and stone slabs were completely dilapidated. “The owners knew about the rickety condition of that roof, yet they did not take any action,” he said. “They were not allowing the rescue work to be carried out and even fled the spot when the roof collapsed.”DCP (rural) Surendranath Tiwari said, based on Sushila Kumar’s complaint, an FIR has been registered against Kunal and Abhishek for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and negligent conduct with respect to pulling down, repairing or constructing buildings.
