A father-son duo was killed while a woman sustained injuries after a wall of their house collapsed in Kalwa late on Monday. Officials said the collapse was triggered by a landslide in the hills next to the locality.
According to Thane Municipal Corporation officials, the incident occurred around 11.30 p.m. at the Adarsh Mitra Mandal chawl in Aatkoneshwar Nagar in Kalwa (East).
The owner of the house, Birendra Gautam (40), his wife Gudiya (35) and their son Sunny (10) were sleeping when a wall came crashing down due to the landslide. Other residents of the area, who rushed out of their houses after hearing the noise, managed to extricate all the three victims and rushed them to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Hospital in Kalwa, where Birendra and Sunny were declared dead before admission, while Ms. Gautam is admitted with internal injuries.
Lalchand Yadav, a neighbour of the Gautams, said, “We had warned Birendra several times that there was a crack in the wall. They had just returned from their native place around 15 days ago, and we were telling them to at least shift somewhere else if they were not going to repair the wall. However, they never listened to us.” The Gautams hailed from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and had been staying in the chawl for 20 years.
Following the incident, the entire chawl, which houses around 50 people, was evacuated, and the residents were put up at the nearby Dnyan Ganga School, where they spent the night.
Ram Prajapati, one of the residents, said, “MLA Jitendra Awhad visited the spot and announced that the chawl had to be demolished. However, there is no solution as to where we will go now. We can’t even go and retrieve our belongings.”
The local authorities arranged for lunch to be provided to the refugees on Tuesday afternoon. “We have no idea what we are going to do now. Our only option is to wait and watch,” Jagan Chavan, another resident, said.
