Lucknow house collapse: Rescue operations end, 3rd body retrieved

Lucknow: The rescue operations in the house collapse incident here have finally ended with the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams retrieving a body of a 42-year-old woman, increasing the overall toll to three.

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, Central Zone, Rajesh Srivastava, identified the body to be of Shabana Khatoon from Unnao.

The SDRF said that from relatives they got to know that the woman was a resident of flat number 201.

Lucknow Police Commissioner S.B. Shirodkar said that with the third body’s recovery, the last person had been traced.

“The debris will continue to be removed. As per our information, there were 17 people inside the five-storey building when it gave way and all have been brought out,” he said.

On Wednesday morning, the rescue teams had pulled out Uzma Haider, 35, and Begum Haider, 75, the wife of senior Congress leader Amir Haider and mother of Samajwadi Party spokesperson Abbas Haider.

Trapped for over 15 hours, both were rescued alive on Wednesday morning but died during treatment at Civil Hospital.

An FIR was registered at Hazratganj police station on Wednesday against builder Nawajish Shahid, who is the son of SP MLA Shahid Manzoor, his cousin Mohammad Tariq and Fahad Yazdani under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), 420 (fraud), 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and section 7 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act.

The district administration said that the debris at the site of the incident was being cleared and the belonging of the residents were being handed over to them after due identification.IANS