On Sunday, a multi-storey PG building in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area collapsed, resulting in at least five fatalities and leaving around 40 people trapped under the debris. In response to this incident, the government fact-checked social media claims that a hostel in Delhi University’s South Campus had also collapsed. The claims were labeled as misleading, particularly a post from Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, along with two others. Authorities are continuing to assess the situation and provide updates on rescue efforts.
This claim is #Misleading. In his post, the CJP convenor claimed “a hostel building in South Campus has collapsed, with students feared trapped under the debris.
The Press Information Bureau ( PIB ), in a fact-check post on X, said, “Several social media posts are claiming that a hostel building in Delhi University’s South Campus has collapsed. “Yesterday, the PM visited DU, gave a political speech and even invoked the term “Dimagi Naxal,” while speaking very little about the state of our educational infrastructure,” Dipke said.
Teams from the DDMA, NDRF, Delhi Fire Services, Delhi Police, MCD, CTS and Civil Defence have been deployed at the site of the collapse, with Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta saying rescue and emergency operations are underway on “war footing. Around 11 students were rescued from under the rubble till the time of writing of this report, and admitted to nearby hospitals. Police said that a PCR call regarding the incident was received at South Campus Police Station at around 1:34pm. Deputy commissioner of police (southwest) Amit Goel said an FIR has been registered against the building owner Hariram and others under sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 290 (negligent conduct with respect to pulling down, repairing or constructing buildings), and 125 (act endangering life or personal safety of others) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) at the South Campus police station. The five-storey structure, which housed a boys’ hostel, was a nearly 30-year-old G 4 building constructed on an area of around 55 square yards in a resettlement colony where permission was granted only for a G 1 unit, a senior MCD official said.
Two of the students, admitted to the AIIMS trauma centre, are in a critical state, the hospital said. The DCP said renovation work was underway on the ground floor, which led to collapse of the building. Locals have blamed repair work and water accumulation in the basement for the collapse of the structure, while the MCD said it could not verify whether work was underway until the debris was cleared. The MCD has evacuated tenants from the building housing a girls’ PG adjoining the collapsed building and sealed it, according to officials.
