: Mudslide at an under-construction building in the posh New Friends Colony in South Delhi left a labourer dead and five others seriously injured.
The police said they were probing the matter even as the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) clarified that the construction was going on legally and the building plan had been sanctioned.
The deceased has been identified as 55-year-old Badri Prasad, a native of Dausa district in Rajasthan. While his family lives in his native village,Prasad and the other injured labourers were staying at a slum in South Delhi.
They were hired for the construction of a private house in New Friends Colony’s D-Block, opposite Mata Mandir. At the time of the accident, there were 8-10 labourers working at the site.
Most of the labourers were working in the basement when a 15-feet high mud wall collapsed on them around 10 a.m. , with nothing to hold them, stood beside them around 10 am on Friday
The police suspect that digging at the extreme edge of that wall caused the mud to slide and collapse on five men and a woman working below. While Prasad was completely buried in the mud, five others were covered with mud till their chest. The other labourers immediately rushed to their aid, digging out the mud around them in a bid to free them.
Guddu, a supervisor working at another construction site right across the accident spot, said he, too, rushed to help the labourers stuck in the mud.
“It took us around 15 minutes to pull out the five workers, but Prasad could not be rescued. He was perhaps standing in a bent position at the time of the collapse because of which he was buried deep in the mud,” said Guddu.
The injured were sent to AIIMS trauma centre where they are undergoing treatment.
