Three workers died, and another sustained critical injuries after a car park platform under construction collapsed 16 floors to the ground at a Borivali West building site on Tuesday morning, according to police. Fire brigade officials, however, indicated that a scaffolding set up for the platform's construction had collapsed.
The BMC issued a stop-work notice to the ground-plus-24-storey under-construction Soni Arkade building near Kalpana Chawla Chowk over safety norms. An official noted that it seemed the construction workers were not wearing any safety gear.
Police stated that work on constructing the car park platform was ongoing when it collapsed. Five labourers were present on the platform. Sagar Pike (25) managed to jump to safety and survived, while Sushil Gupta (35) sustained injuries. Shankar Baidya (26), Manranjan Samddar (43), and Piyush Haldar (38) were pronounced dead.
Police filed an FIR against contractor Sarojkumar Salla (35), site engineer Dhananjay Parab (29), and foreman Rahul Biswas (35) under Sections 304 (A) (causing death due to negligence) and 338 (causing grievous hurt by an act endangering life or personal safety of others) of the IPC. The FIR alleged that they failed to provide adequate safety equipment to the labourers and made them work at a dangerous location. No arrests had been made at the time of publication.