A first-year student, Sana Varsh, narrowly avoided disaster when a paying guest building in the national capital collapsed yesterday, resulting in seven fatalities. The incident occurred as Varsh was preparing to take a bath, leaving him unharmed. Had he been using the taps, he might have become one of the victims in this tragic event.
But the taps had run dry. “I went to a friend’s place to freshen up and the building collapsed. “I used to joke to my friends, will the building collapse? “I even asked a friend jokingly whether the building would collapse. He went to AIIMS later to check on the injured students who had been brought there for treatment. The charges for electricity came separately. And each room had space for a pair of beds, cupboards, chairs and tables. The tragedy has left many families across the country devastated. Among them are the families of Arpit Jaj, who was from Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas, and Yuvraj Soni, who was a resident of Chhattisgarh’s Durg.
Varsh, 18, lived in a shared room on the third floor of the five-storey building in southwest Delhi’s Satya Niketan, a neighbourhood popular with students due to its proximity to colleges. He said the stairs that led to his room on the third floor seemed unplanned due to its narrow width and dampness. Two of his flatmates, Nitish and Neeraj, have not been discharged yet from AIIMS due to the serious nature of their injuries.
He said he decided to go to a friend’s house to freshen up and left just 15 minutes before the building fell, trapping and killing many. The building was said to be at least 50 years old. Each floor had two rooms and the students paid Rs 14,000 per person.
“If there was water in the tap I would have been buried under debris,” Varsh said. The student of Motilal Nehru College said the building always looked like it would crumble any moment. Varsh, who came to Delhi University from West Bengal’s Alipurduar district, told NDTV. Varsh said he was still at his friend’s house when the building caved in. “I had been hearing noises from the basement since morning,” he said. Both of us had a good laugh over it,” he said with a very human confidence in the inability to see the future. Following the tragedy, Varsh said he rushed back to the site and started looking for some of his missing friends. Varsh said the paying guest, though old, had renovated its rooms a few months ago. “I used to tell my friends that one day I would fall down from these stairs and die,” he said. They shared a common bathroom, he said. Varsh said all his belongings including important documents are still under the rubble. “I don’t know if we will get our security deposit back,” he said.
Both had visited their homes a few days earlier to celebrate Raksha Bandhan.
