A three-year-old boy survived a building collapse in Delhi’s Seemapuri with minor injuries, but lost his mother in the tragedy that has left at least five people dead.
Neighbours who rushed to the site on Wednesday first found the child crying beside his injured grandmother, Salma. The boy was taken to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, where doctors treated his minor leg injuries. He was discharged on Thursday and has since been repeatedly asking for his mother, Nusrat, 35, who died in the collapse.
“He is restless and constantly crying for his mother,” the boy’s aunt Shehnaz said, describing the difficulty the family is facing in explaining the tragedy to him.
The boy’s father, Abdul Hasan, 37, said he had left home around 9am for his garment shop in central Delhi. His wife and son were sleeping at the time. At around 3.30pm, Hasan received a call from his brother-in-law Sheikh Noor informing him that the building had collapsed and his family was trapped.
Hasan rushed back and found his son and in-laws safe, but Nusrat was missing. Her body was eventually recovered around 3.30am on Thursday.
The family had moved into the building only about a month earlier because their own house, located roughly 300 metres away, was being reconstructed. The collapsed building was owned by Hasan’s father-in-law, Anwar, who was supervising construction work at the family’s other house.
According to relatives, Nusrat was climbing down the staircase from the second floor to the first floor to give food to her son when the structure suddenly collapsed. The boy was on the ground floor with his grandmother and escaped with minor injuries.
Another victim, 60-year-old Hazra Bibi, was also recovered from the debris on Thursday. Her husband, Sheikh Hamid, said she had gone to meet Salma shortly before the collapse.
Hamid said witnesses told him that Hazra had noticed her 17-year-old grandson Ayaan standing in the lane moments before the building came down. She reportedly shouted at him to run to another lane. Ayaan escaped, but Hazra was caught beneath the collapsing structure.
Hazra is survived by her husband, four sons and two daughters.
Rescue operations continued at the site as local residents told authorities that one or two people could still be trapped under the debris.
The collapse occurred in the narrow lanes of New Seemapuri, making access difficult for rescue teams. Firefighters and local residents worked together to clear debris, with the Eidgah area serving as the main access point.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi said the building was around 20-25 years old and stood in a jhuggi-jhopadi cluster under the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board.
The incident has once again raised concerns over structural safety and enforcement of building regulations in Delhi.
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