From classrooms to coffins: What happened in Delhi building collapse?

New Delhi: Tucked behind a set of retractable queue barriers, Pushpa Jaj sat on the floor outside the main entrance to New Delhi’s AIIMS Trauma centre on Monday. Since arriving there, every few minutes, she unlocks her phone, looks at a photograph of her son, lets out loud shrieks and breaks down inconsolably. Her eyes are swollen and her clothes are caked with dust. Four women, all strangers to her, stand around her, holding her closely as she weeps. As her cries and pleas for her son to return overtook the compound, she lost consciousness. When she comes around, the shrieks and cries turn even louder.

Through Monday morning, Pushpa searched for her 19-year-old son, Arpit Jaj, in Satya Niketan, a neighbourhood mostly dotted by PG (Paying Guest) accommodations near Delhi University’s South Campus where students from outside the capital rent rooms. She was eventually told that Arpit had been rescued from the rubble of the collapsed building and shifted to AIIMS Trauma Centre last evening.

But when she reached the hospital, she was told that her son had been brought dead.

Arpit and six others were killed when a five-storey building housing Hostel Daze, the private PG where Arpit stayed, collapsed on Sunday afternoon.

In a statement, AIIMS said that five of the killed were 20-year-old or younger students while the other two were labourers aged 56 and 30 years old. The condition of a victim of the wreckage remains critical.

The owner of the PG, 81-year-old Hariram Gupta was arrested from Rajasthan on Monday and was brought to New Delhi, where Delhi police arrested him along with his wife and son. The Patiala House court on September 7 sent the octogenarian owner and his wife to 14-day judicial remand while their son was remanded to 2-day police custody.

“Why did I even let him go to Delhi that day,” said Pushpa, ruing her fate. “If I had stopped him, he would have been alive today. Please bring him back.”

Arpit had returned home to Dewas city in Madhya Pradesh a few days earlier to celebrate Raksha Bandhan with his family. On the evening of September 5, Arpit boarded a train back to the capital. “I had asked him to stay for some more days but he did not agree. He promised next time he would stay for longer,” added Pushpa. “I then packed some home cooked food for him for the journey. He would always crave my cooking and would usually tell me how much he missed my food in Delhi.”

Arpit reached his PG accommodation around 9 am on Sunday. Almost three hours later, Pushpa video called him. “The first thing he said was how much he was missing me in Delhi,” continued Pushpa. “The last thing we talked about was food and then he said he was going for lunch and would call later in the evening.”

That call never came.

About an hour after the building collapsed, the Jaj family in Dewas received a call from one of Arpit’s friends. “He asked us if Arpit was still in Dewas,” recalled Pushpa. “When we informed him of his whereabouts, he told us the PG building had collapsed.”

When Pushpa and three other family members reached New Delhi on Sunday evening, they still hoped that Arpit had made it out safely. The next morning, they were asked to identify Arpit’s body. While other family members confirmed it was Arpit, Pushpa still refuses to believe he is dead.

“He will not leave me alone like this,” said Pushpa, visibly shaken . “He is still alive.”

‘They would take him home in a coffin"

Satya Niketan is a tightly packed neighbourhood where old residential houses over the years have been converted into multi storey PG accommodations. Buildings stand cheek by jowl, separated in places by little more than narrow gaps between walls. The lanes are brutally narrow, the buildings rise several storeys above them, and rooms and beds are rented out floor by floor to students.

As Delhi University’s South Campus is just a stone’s throw away, a PG in Satya Niketan is the first home in Delhi for hundreds of students far from home. So was it for Rashi Tiwari’s friend, who had arrived in the capital two years ago.

On the stairs of a shuttered shop, beneath a five storey building housing another PG and barely a stone’s throw from the collapsed Hostel Daze, Rashi has been sitting in the same spot since Monday morning, her eyes locked at the rescue operation’s site.

Her friend’s body was recovered from the debris on Sunday evening. “When I looked at his face, I knew he was dead,” said 21-year-old Rashi, who struggles to even recall her friend’s name. “My PG is only a few metres from Hostel Daze, so I would usually bump into him. How would I live in this place knowing that he is dead?”

According to Rashi, whenever she met her friend, he would only talk about how he wanted to build a career, earn enough and provide a better life for his family. “He had ambitions and also the caliber to achieve them,” she added.

Rashi keeps pointing to a corner where she first saw her friend. “He was with his parents when I saw him for the first time near that corner,” she said. “His parents had brought him here in a taxi from home. It was their first time travelling so far from home. They had so many dreams for him.”

When the building collapsed, Rashi was among the group of friends who had called his family to inform them about the incident. “When we called his home, we told them that students were under debris but everybody was safe because we ourselves hoped they were all safe,” recalled Rashi. “But then one by one dead bodies were pulled out and he was among them…Those same parents who brought him here with dreams, would now take him home in a coffin.”

While faces in Satya Niketan mourned people they knew, back at AIIMS, the family of 21-year-old Pavan Kumar was waiting to find him. Pavan was pursuing a computer science programme at Delhi University’s Motilal Nehru College and had shifted to the PG accommodation just a month earlier.

“I found out through social media that a building had collapsed in South Campus and that my brother was inside. I came here but I have no idea where my brother is,” Pavan’s 19-year-old sister, Priyanshi, told the Media on Sunday. “The last time I spoke to him was on Saturday evening, since then we had no communication.”

On Monday morning, Pavan’s dead body was handed over to his family. In videos that have gone viral across social networking sites, Pavan’s relatives can be seen jumping into an ambulance carrying his dead body in a refrigerated steel coffin.

"Can't stretch out arms at same time"

As luggage bags, notebooks, clothes, water bottles and other belongings of students from Hostel Daze lay scattered among the wreckage, students living in Satya Niketan allege the conditions in the neighbourhood’s PGs are cramped, poorly ventilated and barely regulated.

For Akshay, a second year student at Delhi University’s College of Business Studies from Trivadi Haryana, five students share two small rooms in his PG. Together, they pay Rs 35,000 a month. The rooms, he said, are so cramped that two people cannot stretch their arms out at the same time.

“When it rains, there is always a fear that the buildings could fall,” Akshay said, pointing to the age of the buildings around him. Many, he said, are decades old, with additional floors built on top of the original structures. “Despite this, the owner hiked the rent to 40 thousand last month,” he claimed. “So, it’s only about money and barely about student safety.”

According to Akshay, Hostel Daze too was an old building. ”About a week before the collapse, construction work had started on its basement. The owner had wanted to develop it as an indoor gaming zone,” he continued. “They were increasing the infrastructure to earn more. Most of the buildings here have five storeys. They have been constructed on not more than 50 meters of area, have structural deficiencies and stand without any proper foundational and beam support.”

However, for students living in these PGs there is hardly any authority who they can turn to when something goes wrong. Akshay alleged that the MCD officials had never inspected the buildings since he rented a bed in the accommodation and students often do not even know who their landlord is. “In most of the cases, students don’t even know who the owner is. Everything is done through a broker,” informed Akshay. “He provides them with the space and then leaves. The brokers only come back when they have to collect the rent.”

But students still continue to choose Satya Niketan, mostly because of its proximity to Delhi University’s South Campus. For many, Akshay said, living close to college helps save on daily travel expenses. “We all are mostly from low earning families,” he said. “Even an extra Rs 1000 in expenses can hurt the entire family for a year. That is why we continue to live in such places.”

Bihar native Shivam Sharma, a third year student at Delhi University’s Motilal Nehru College, alleged that students who complain to PG owners can find themselves threatened rather than assured. “If we raise any complaint with owners, they usually threaten us with ‘I will call your parents and inform them that you drink and smoke,’” Sharma alleged. “Then what options do we have left?”

For students like Akshay and Sharma, the collapse of Hostel Daze has now changed discomfort of the infrastructure to literal fear for their lives. “Today, it is one PG. Tomorrow it can be more because every other PG is the same. No rules and regulations are being followed,” Akshay said. “Today, somebody else died. Tomorrow, it can be me and hundred others.”

According to Akshay, there is an extreme dearth in availability of hostel rooms in college campuses, so the natural option for students is choosing these PG accommodations. “So, in a way, the crisis actually starts from the university itself,” he said.

But, his claim is not without basis.

On Monday, the Delhi High Court pointed to the shortage of university and government hostels, saying inadequate hostel capacity pushes students towards dangerous private accommodation.

It directed the MCD to conduct a comprehensive inspection of PG accommodations within a week and sought responses on how such properties are regulated. The court also questioned the responsibility of not only the building owner but also the MCD and Delhi University, noting that the government could not escape responsibility for the safety of students living in such PGs.

The Delhi government, meanwhile, ordered a magisterial inquiry, suspended five MCD officials including a deputy commissioner and launched a drive to seal illegal buildings with unauthorised fifth floors.

But while the state has moved to act after the collapse, back at AIIMS, Pushpa Jaj remains inconsolable. As her wails bring tears to those around her, the women holding her slowly move her away from the entrance of the Trauma Centre. She clutches her phone, with Arpit’s photograph still open on its screen.