Where is the building owner?

From police to civic authorities to National Disaster Response Force to residents of locality to local MLA, every one was present at the site of collapsed building at Nanakramguda.

Main person missing and everyone wanted to see was owner of the building. Satyanarayana Singh alias Sattu Singh, owner of the newly constructed building that collapsed on Thursday night and his family members were not to be seen in the vicinity.

Policemen inquiring about him said that he had gone on a pilgrimage while some said he had gone underground to evade the ongoing investigation into the collapse of his building that claimed five lives.

For the past several months, Singh used to personally visit the place to oversee progress of the building’s construction work.

Along with other sections, investigators invoked sections 304-A (rash and negligent act resulting in death) and 304 Part-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of Indian Penal Code against him.

Preliminary inquiries indicated, interestingly, that he owned two other buildings in the same street. While one was a five-storeyed building, another was a smaller one. Both the buildings were rented out to others.

The collapsed building and the second big building were apparently built with small portions anticipating high returns in the form of monthly rents. Teams were constituted to arrest Singh while investigation was on to ascertain precise reasons for the building collapse.

While six more are feared trapped inside the debris, a neighbourhood family had to evacuate their ground plus one floor house as it was hit by the debris of the collapsed building. As part of the rescue work, wall of the damaged building had to be razed to the ground.

Police secured steel scaffoldings to support the concrete slab of the damaged building. “Equally important was safety of the adjacent building. Its occupants escaped by tying saris to the first floor’s grills and slid down using them,” Madhapur ACP M. Ramana Kumar said.