The toll in the building collapse in Karnataka’s Dharwad rose to three on Wednesday after rescuers retrieved one more body from the debris, PTI reported. Fifty-six people have been rescued from the rubble of the four-storeyed building that collapsed on Tuesday evening in Kumareshwara Nagar.
The police said the rescue operation has been intensified to pull out 30 people who are believed to be trapped at the site.
The rescue operation is being conducted by three National Disaster Relief Force teams, police personnel, five fire tenders and 10 ambulances. Two of the NDRF teams are from Ghaziabad and one from Bengaluru.
Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy said he was monitoring the rescue operation and urged relatives not to panic. “The rescue work is on a war footing,” Kumaraswamy tweeted. “All those feared trapped in the building will be rescued as soon as possible.”
On Tuesday, former Karnataka minister and Congress leader Vinay Kulkarni said that his relative was one of the building’s owners and that all those found guilty should be penalised.
A report in The News Minute said that Kulkarni’s father-in-law Gangadhar Shintry was one of the owners and that the owners had obtained a partial completion certificate from the Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation.
