Builder held for Mumbai collapse

Mumbai police have arrested builder Pramod Seth and engineer Ketan Seth and charged them with culpable homicide not amounting to murder after a wall of the under-construction Nandraj building in Andheri collapsed, killing five people and injuring 10 others.

‘‘We have charged them with culpable homicide because we found that the digging was taking place at the base of the wall, which was dangerous and resulted in the wall collapse,’’ said Amitabh Gupta, Deputy Commissioner of Police.

When the compound wall fell at around 10.15 am, around 15 labourers working at its base were trapped in the debris. At the time of the incident, a JCB excavator was ploughing the mud at the base of the wall.

According to eyewitnesses, the teeth of the JCB got stuck with the steel reinforcement at the head of the wall. ‘‘Instead of stopping work, the driver just tried to pull the extension because of which the wall fell,’’ claimed Seth.