Ceiling Of Apartment Building Collapses, Killing Elderly Couple

Two elderly residents of what officials said was an unauthorized residential building in India's Maharashtra state died after a portion of the structure's ceiling collapsed this week, according to reports.

A slab of the first-floor ceiling of the Moti Chhaya Building in Mumbai's Mulund East area collapsed shortly after 7:45 p.m. Monday, the Hindustan Times reported, citing the disaster control cell of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the city's governing civic body.

Two of the building's residents, identified as 93-year-old Devshankar Nathalal Shukla and his 87-year-old wife Arkhiben Devshankar Shukla, were the only people present at the time, an unnamed official said, according to the outlet.

Both were rushed to the hospital, but they were later declared dead, according to the official.

More people may have died from the incident had other residents been present at the time, according to Prabhakar Shinde, a former corporator of this locality who was at the scene.

"There are at least five families who live as tenants in the building. The couple who died stayed by themselves, and their relatives who stayed nearby used to send them food twice a day. The number of casualties could have been higher, but all the other occupants were out," Shinde said.

Prior to the collapse, the local ward office reportedly issued a notice to the building's residents earlier this year stating that the structure was dilapidated.

"The building is approximately 25 years old, and earlier this year, we had issued them a notice under the section 351 of the [BMC] act seeking response from the occupants for multiple alterations that were carried out in the building," the unnamed official said.

A section 351 notice is like a show cause notice that is served to the owner or occupant of a residential structure to seek permissions and authorizations granted by the local administration for carrying out structural alterations, according to the BMC act.

Such a notice would not have mattered, and authorities should have simply forced the residents out as the structure was unauthorized, said Mulund legislator Mihir Kotecha of the India's majority Bharatiya Janata Party.

"Most of these residential structures are illegally set up without taking proper permission from the civic body. It doesn't matter now if the BMC had sent them a notice earlier or not. What they should have done is evict the occupants and demolish the structures," Kotecha was quoted as saying by the outlet.