A child, around 10 months old, in a hospital in Thane after surviving the building collapse. “We don’t know who her parents or relatives are. She has escaped with scratches on her face, legs and hands,” a hospital attendant said in the afternoon. (AFP)

Mumbai, April 5: If empires were built on the bones of the wretched and the damned, a high-rise that collapsed last night and buried alive 58 people on the outskirts of India’s financial capital appeared to have survived on human demolition shields.

Several occupants of the illegal eight-storey building in Thane told chief minister Ashok Chavan today that many poor families were allowed to stay there free or for a low rent so that demolition squads would think twice before cracking down.

The occupants said they were to have vacated their rooms once some of the low-income group flats were sold or the original owners moved in.

Civic officials claimed that builders Jamal Qureshi and Salim Sheikh, who are absconding, had offered the flats on rents as low as Rs 1,000 a month and free in some cases. Market rent in the area is estimated to be around Rs 4,000 a month.

It was not clear if the civic officials were using the “demolition-shield” claim as an excuse for inaction in a ward that apparently has as many as 100 illegal buildings. Other officials said most of the casualties and occupants were poor labourers who could not have afforded the market rate.

At least 10 people among those feared dead are from Bengal — a recurring geographical feature in most interstate tragedies that befall migrant labourers. The missing labourers from Malda had gone to Thane in search of construction jobs that pay a few hundred rupees more than the daily wage of Rs 136 under the 100-day employment scheme. ( )

The building in Thane was built in just two months on encroached forest land without civic clearances. Under normal circumstances, such a structure and basement would have taken at least 24 months to build.

Sixty-one people have been rescued from the rubble of Lucky Compound that many residents said wasn’t there until early this year in Mumbra, a cheek-by-jowl suburb 40km from Mumbai and teeming with migrants.

Many more are still feared trapped in the debris, with rescuers using seismic gadgets and gas-cutters. Noise from onlookers was standing in the way as the seismic devices need extreme quiet.

Civic officials said around 125-130 people were inside the rubble of the building, the eighth floor of which was still under construction.

The dead include 16 women and 22 children, the youngest of them a two-and-a-half-year-old. The toll could go up further.

One survivor, 37-year-old Imran Siddiqui from Delhi, lost 13 family members, including his pregnant wife.

The building collapsed like a pack of cards because of what disaster managers call the “pancake effect”, under which each falling floor adds its weight to the others and flattens the full structure. The most indelible image of “the pancake effect” was the way the Twin Towers collapsed in the 9/11 attacks in New York.

If planes commandeered by terrorists bought down the Twin Towers, shoddy construction and substandard material appear to have done so in Thane.

“I am not an engineer or a building expert but poor quality of construction and material, besides non-adherence to construction norms for high-rise buildings, has caused this tragedy,” said Alok Awasthi, commandant of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

“The nature of the collapse is unique. The rubble was intact. We had to cut it carefully to ensure no damage was caused to people stuck inside,” Awasthi added.

Special executive officer Mangal Patil said he had sent at least two reminders last month about Lucky Compound, one to the chief minister’s office and the other to that of the Thane municipal commissioner.

“The municipal ward in which this building stood has over 100 illegal buildings. I had sent information to authorities regarding these, including Lucky Compound, on March 7 and 19 but got no response,” Patil said.

Chavan’s office was not available for comment. The deputy municipal commissioner, a police inspector and a forest official have been suspended.