Seven people who ducked against a wall to wait out a sudden storm in Bengaluru died on Wednesday when it fell on them. The wall belonged to the compound of the Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital in Shivajinagar, PTI reported, citing police.
Heavy rain and strong winds had battered the area, officials said. The seven were sheltering beside the wall when it came down without warning. Police and emergency crews arrived with an earthmover, and residents helped pull the bodies from the debris.
The toll of children is reported differently. PTI and the Free Press Journal said three of the dead were children. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, speaking to reporters at the site, said two were. He also said seven people were injured, all of them stable and out of danger, and that he had told doctors to treat them free of cost.
Who the victims were
“Those who died are very poor people, traders, street vendors,” Siddaramaiah said as he announced ₹5 lakh solatium for the kin of each of the deceased. Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said at least four people from Kerala were caught in the collapse and two of them died. They worked with an organisation that promotes a nutritious diet. Their postmortems would be done at the earliest, he said, and the bodies sent back to Kerala soon.
Shivakumar cut short a meeting when he heard. “I have spoken to the commissioner of police, that’s why I have cut off the meeting, and I am going to the spot immediately,” he said.
Questions over the wall
Siddaramaiah went to the site with M Maheshwar Rao, chief commissioner of the Greater Bengaluru Authority, and Bengaluru Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh. He ordered a probe and, PTI reported, took the authority’s officials to task.
He said civil work was under way inside the compound and a contractor had been dumping soil against the wall that fell. “Prima facie, it appears to have fallen due to that pressure,” he said. He had asked the Executive Engineer and Assistant Executive Engineer whether they had checked if the wall had weakened. If the inquiry finds the engineers at fault, he said, action will follow immediately. Nobody expected such heavy, untimely rain, he added, calling it pre-monsoon weather.
The opposition went further. R Ashoka, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, called the deaths “a state-sponsored disaster born out of sheer administrative negligence.” He wrote on X: “How many more lives must be sacrificed at the altar of poor infrastructure and civic apathy?” BJP state president B Y Vijayendra asked the Congress government to take responsibility, treat the injured and compensate the families.
Sources
- At least seven killed including three children after govt hospital's wall collapses amid Bengaluru rains | Today News
- Bengaluru Tragedy: 7 Killed, Including 3 Children, In Wall Collapse Near Bowring Hospital | VIDEO
