Police have arrested three including a junior engineer and a supervisor after twenty-five people were killed and 17 injured when the roof of a shelter at a cremation ground in Uttar Pradesh’s Muradnagar collapsed on Sunday.
The incident occurred when several people had taken shelter under the recently constructed structure while it rained. The dead, all of them men, were mostly relatives or neighbours of Jai Ram, who was being cremated at that time, officials said.
Police have registered an FIR against Junior Engineer Chandrapal, supervisor Ashish, EO Niharika Singh, contractor Ajay Tyagi and others. The FIR has been registered under Sections 304, 337, 338, 427 and 409 at the Muradnagar Police Station.
Rescue workers yesterday sifted through the building’s rubble for hours to ensure that more victims were not trapped there. The local people were the first to arrive at the cremation ground in Muradnagar’s Ukhlarsi village in Ghaziabad district, adjoining the national capital.
Police followed by a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) unit also then reached the spot, pulling out the dead and the injured from the debris. “As many as 24 people have died and 17 others have been injured in the incident,” District Magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey said. At least 18 of them had been identified by the evening.
PM Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief over the deaths. “I express my condolences to the near and dear ones of those who lost their lives in this accident, and also hope for a quick recovery of the injured,” Modi tweeted in Hindi.
Adityanath announced Rs 2 lakh as financial relief for the families of each man killed. The chief minister also directed Meerut’s Divisional Commissioner and Additional Director General of the police zone to submit a report on the incident.
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