NEW DELHI: Delhi Police has arrested the man who used to run a PG facility on four floors of the building that collapsed in Satya Niketan under the name Hostel Daze.Police suspect he runs a total of seven such facilities in the area under the same name and are probing his entire operation. This building collapsed on Sept 6, leaving seven people dead.The operator, Shudhanshu Lovneesh (31) has told cops that he had taken four floors in the ill-fated building on lease, along with associate Shubham Tyagi, in Aug last year for Rs 1.05 lakh per month. Tyagi is absconding.They managed to rent the building cheap due to its dilapidated condition.PG operator fled after students identified himA resident of Bhajanpura, Lovneesh graduated from Delhi University in 2019, and three years later, in 2022, he and Tyagi got into the business of running PG accommodations in Satya Niketan. He has told the cops that there are several others like him who are operating such facilities in old buildings on lease.A Delhi court Wednesday remanded Lovneesh and two others – building owner’s son Mahesh Gupta (52) and contractor Sanoj – in two days in police custody. Mahesh was produced after his earlier two-day police remand ended. Police had sought three days’ custody for all three to question them and confront them with the owner of the building, Hariram Gupta (81) who retired from IAF, and his wife, Urmila (75) who had been sent to 14 days in judicial custody Monday.Contractor Sanoj has told the cops that the basement was getting flooded with rainwater for 8 to 10 days and, in an unconventional solution, had been filled with three truckloads of construction debris to bring it up to the level of the ground floor.Police Wednesday confirmed TOI’s report that the building collapsed like a pack of cards because a retaining wall on the ground floor was removed to merge two shops. Four additional floors had already been built on a weak foundation and the removal of the wall was the last straw.Sanoj told the police that he had been engaged for the work by Mahesh Gupta around 10 days before the incident and was being paid Rs 2,800 per day. He had been apprehended from Kasganj in UP on Tuesday. The labourers engaged in the work were being paid Rs 800 daily and they too are being questioned.Police sources said Lovneesh had reached the spot soon after the building collapsed but fled after students began to point him out as the operator of the PG. He then rushed to a friend’s house in Burari, from where the police have nabbed him.The proceedings for remand of Lovneesh, Mahesh Gupta and Sanoj in the court of judicial magistrate Kautuk Bharadwaj were held in camera after the counsel for Lovneesh said the case was at a nascent stage and a “media trial” would prejudice the ongoing probe. The magistrate then directed the media personnel to leave the courtroom.
