The toll in the Taratala warehouse collapse in south Kolkata rose to 10 on Thursday as rescue teams, aided by the Army’s advanced ground-penetrating radar (GPR) system, continued intensive search operations through the rubble nearly 21 hours after the incident, officials said.
Five more people were rescued from the debris in the morning, taking the total number of survivors pulled out to 30, according to sources involved in the operation.
Those killed in the collapse have been identified as Krishna Chowdhury (30), Rohit Chowdhury (40), Rahul Chowdhury (17), Chandrama Chowdhury (60), Pappu Rajak (40), Azgar Hossain (55), Sahil Sardar (17), Ghee Kumar (17) and two more persons who are yet to be identified, a senior official of the state government said.
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari had earlier said nine people have died and 20 others were injured when an under-construction warehouse collapsed in Kolkata’s Taratala area a day ago.
In a statement in the Assembly, he announced ₹10 lakh compensation for the families of each deceased and ₹1 lakh for each injured in the incident.
Of the 20 injured, one is in critical condition, and four are in serious condition, the chief minister said.
Stating that five people have been arrested in connection with the warehouse collapse at Transport Depot Road in west Kolkata, Adhikari asserted that no one will be spared.
He said that former mayor and minister Firhad Hakim’s signature appears on the building plan of the collapsed warehouse.
A day earlier, the chief minister said that preliminary inputs received from Kolkata Municipal Corporation engineers suggested that there were defects in the building plan approved for the warehouse.
He has suspended till July 31 the work of all under-construction commercial projects approved by the previous TMC government, and ordered a comprehensive audit of such projects following the warehouse collapse.
The roof of the warehouse located on the Transport Depot Road near Brace Bridge in the Taratala area caved in at around noon on Wednesday. Several people were working at the site at the time of the incident, a Kolkata Police officer said.
