#PuneWallCollapse: Families left bereft and in dire poverty while builders ‘clearly violated’ rules

Sixty-year-old Manjudevi is slumped on the ground. Sitting in her home in Darihara village in Chapra Saran district, Bihar, she intermittently weeps and faints. It’s been four days since she heard the news of her son’s death.

Sunil Kumar Singh, 35, was a construction labourer who died on June 26 in Kondhwa, Pune, when a building wall collapsed over him. Fourteen others died that night, including four children, when a retaining wall of Alcon Stylus Housing Society collapsed over an adjoining labour camp in an under-construction site owned by the Kanchan Group. This “camp” is a glorified tin shed that housed the site’s workers. 

Manjudevi is inconsolable. She tells Newslaundry: “Hamare ko kama ke khilane waala hamara babua chala gaya (My son who used to earn for us has died). His father died 19 years back. Since then, my son helped me to raise our family.”

Sunil Kumar Singh.

Manjudevi herself worked as a labourer in the village and as a result, her son stepped up and took on the responsibility of the rest of the family. “It’s unbearable to see him gone. I have struggled so hard after the death of my husband, my son always supported me. I don’t know how we will survive now.” 

Sunil Kumar Singh is survived by his wife and two sons, aged 12 and 10. He worked in Pune as a construction worker for over 10 years. His last visit home was five months ago. According to Ashok Singh, a relative of Singh’s who is with the family, Singh hadn’t been paid by the Kanchan Group for the last four months and was therefore unable to send money home.

Singh’s wife Reeta Devi, 30, is unable to come to terms with his death. “What will we do now? It’s not possible to live without him. He was staying away from us in difficult conditions just to provide the best to us.” Breaking down, she repeats, “I don’t know how we will live without him.” Her 12-year-old son Abhishek tells Newslaundry, “Papa bahaut pyaar karte thay humko, unse he sab kuch tha (Papa used to love us a lot, because of him, everything was there).”

In Dighara village in the same district, another family deals with grief. Like Singh, Lakshmikant Sahani died in the wall collapse. Sahani had worked as a labourer from the age of 17, moving to Pune for work in 2002. His brother Ranjay Sahani, 28, is also a labourer. Ranjay says: “Since 2002, he worked at various construction sites in Pune. He completed his matriculation but since our family didn’t have money to afford his education, he started working.” 

Lakshmikant Sahani.

Ranjay also recently came to Pune to work alongside his brother. They earned ₹300-400 for eight hours of work. “But there was no time limit for work, we generally work between 14 and 18 hours a day,” Ranjay explains.

Lakshmikant Sahani began working at the Kanchan Group’s construction site five months ago. Ranjay worked with him but left a week before the wall collapse. “I didn’t like working over there. We hadn’t been paid for the last four months. My brother and I and four others were told our dues would be paid once building work starts. We used to get ₹500-700 to buy rations and we’d spend ₹200 of that as pocket expenditure.”

According to Ranjay, construction companies often don’t want to provide their construction workers with accommodation at a location that isn’t the construction site; they worry that workers will then turn up late for work. “So they give tin shed accommodation on the site, so they can make us work whenever they want. We wake up at 4 am, prepare our food and start working from 7 am to 10-11 pm.”

Lakshmikant Sahani’s family.

Sahani’s 70-year-old father Naresh is filled with distress. “What should I say? I have lost my boy. Our family does not have much resources to survive. He was the sole earner in our family. We don’t even have land or property. There’s no employment in our village, most of the boys from here work as labourers in different states.”

Thirty-year-old Avdhesh Singh from Ranipokhar village in Chapra Saran district died in the same incident. Working as a construction labourer in Pune for the last 10 years, he would visit his family once a year for 20-25 days. His last visit home was in February. Struggling with the news of his death, his family said they never imagined they wouldn’t see him again. 

Avdhesh Singh.

Singh’s father, 62-year-old Shail Singh, says his son didn’t choose to work so far away. “Nobody wants to leave their house to work over 2,000 km away. But my son went so we can all live properly. He went for the sake of the family. It’s difficult to believe he’s not alive. His mother and wife are still in shock and have not stopped crying ever since we heard the news.”

Shail is grappling with the fact that his son died “without any reason”. “We are poor people. Nobody cares about us. People will talk about this incident for some time and then everything will run as before. Avdhesh told me on the phone just a few days ago that he hadn’t received his daily wages for the last 4-5 months.”

Singh’s elder brother Tribhuvan is 34 and a health condition keeps him at home. He tells Newslaundry: “My father is old. I’m suffering from an ailment. Avdhesh was the one taking care of the family.” He also says his brother had not been paid for four or five months. “He gave his debit card to my father. Yesterday, we went to the ATM to take out money but there was only ₹257 in his account.”

Avdhesh Singh’s parents, wife and children.

Newslaundry spoke to the family of 19-year-old Aman Sharma, one of the victims in the June 29 tragedy. Sharma was from Katihar in Bihar. His relative Mahesh Sharma says poverty sent him to Pune six months before. “He belongs to a poor family, that’s why he came to Pune to work as a labourer. His parents are not ready to believe that their son died.”

The other victims have been identified as Ravi Sharma (19), Mohan Sharma (24), Alok Sharma (28), Bhima Das (38), Niva Devi (30), Sangita Devi (26), Ovi Das (2), Sonali Das (6), Ajit Kumar Sharma (7), Rekhalkumar Sharma (5) and Dipranjan Sharma—all residents of Katihar. 

But this isn’t the only tragedy of this kind to have taken place in the recent past in Pune. On Tuesday, July 2, a wall collapse in Ambegaon Budruk area of Pune killed six construction workers: four men and two women. The retaining wall of Venutai Chavan Polytechnic College in Sinhagad Technical Education Society (STES) collapsed on the hutment of labourers in a construction site adjacent to the wall. 

The victims are Radhelal Patel (25), Mamta Patel (22), Jetu Patel (50) and Pradeshnin Patel (45) from Navagad tehsil in Chhattisgarh’s Bemetara district. Radhelal married Mamta only three months ago, and Jetu and Pradeshnin are Mamta’s parents. The other two victims are Jitu Ravte (23) and Prahlad Ravte (30) from Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh.

Radhelal Patel’s brother-in-law Narendra told Newslaundry: “Radhelal got married two days before Holi. He was so happy after getting married.” Radhelal’s wife and in-laws were originally from Bitkuli but moved to Bemetara due to poverty. Radhelal worked as a construction worker hoping to earn money for his family.

Radhelal Patel with his parents.

Narendra says, “This incident has devastated our whole family. His mother is in deep shock and his father is very sad.”

The accused

On June 29, the Pune police registered an FIR against Alcon Landmarks Group (whose building’s wall collapsed) and Kanchan Developers (which owns the adjacent construction site where the labourers were killed).

Kodhwa police station booked Jagdishprasad Agrawal (64), Sachin Agrawal (34), Rajesh Agrawal (27), Vivek Agrawal (21) and Vipul Agrawal (21) of Alcon Builders and Promoters, and Pankaj Vohra, Suresh Shah and Rashmikant Gandhi of Kanchan Developers.

Alcon’s Vivek and Vipul Agrawal were arrested on Saturday. They were produced in court on the same day and remanded to police custody till Tuesday, which was later extended to July 6. The remaining accused from Alcon have not been arrested yet: they are approaching a Pune court for anticipatory bail. Similarly, the three accused from Kanchan Developers approached a Pune court for anticipatory bail on Tuesday but it was rejected. The reasons cited by the court included the seriousness of the crime and the fact that the investigation is in its initial stages.

In the wall collapse incident of July 2, Bharti Vidya Peeth police station registered a case against the administrator Venutai Chavan polytechnic college of  STES, the land owner Sakharam Kondre, builder Balasaheb Danagat and officers of the building permission department of the Pune Municipal Corporation. No arrests have been made yet. 

K Venkatesham, Commissioner of Police, Pune, told Newslaundry “the culprits will be arrested”. When asked how long it would take, he said, “How can I say? I want to arrest them right now.”

The retaining walls were made of ‘cheap material’

A source privy to the investigation into the wall collapses in Kondhwa and Ambegaon Budruk said both Alcon Builders and STES had “violated rules”.

With respect to the Kondhwa incident, the source said Alcon built the retain wall using “uncourse rubble masonry” or UCR, which is made of stone and mortar cement. The quality of the stone and mortar was questionable, as was their mixture. “They did not put cement as per standards, because of which a void was created and the quality of the wall was poor.”

The source says a design is vital to make a retaining wall, but no such design was prepared by Alcon. “In government departments, retaining walls made of UCR have been banned for the last 25 years, but private construction companies still use it. There’s no harm but then it should be properly designed and prepared according to standards. Both these things were not followed by Alcon Builders.”

Had the builder followed protocol and used a proper-designed retaining wall made of Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC), the wall would not have collapsed, the source says. RSS costs ₹15,000  per metre and UCC only ₹5,000 per metre. The wall built by Alcon which collapsed was four metres high and 100 metres long. “In order to save some money, this incident occurred,” the source says. “They should have used RCC.”

Earlier this year, residents of Alcon Stylus had written to Alcon Builders to tell them about the weakened condition of the wall. An email was sent to the builder on February 16. Hafiz Shaik, a resident of Alcon Stylus, says, “We sent the mail to the builder. He told us he’ll repair it but he didn’t do anything.”

In the STES wall collapse, the source says the wall was also built using UCR and was made partly of stone and flash bricks  which was slightly better than the wall at Alcon Stylus”. “They did not keep the standardised distance between the retaining wall and the building,” the source explains. The standard distance needs to be more than seven metres. The distance between the wall and building in STES was only 1.7 metres.

Another factor leading to the collapse is the presence of trees between the wall and the building. “The roots of the trees entered the wall and weakened it. The wall was also not designed properly. All these factors—along with the rains—led to the collapse of the wall. They clearly violated the rules.”  

Newslaundry contacted Prashant Waghmare, city engineer of the Pune Municipal Corporation, to ask him what action has been taken against officials who inspected the under-construction site owned by Kanchan Developers. He did not respond. The story will be updated if a response is received.

‘No one cares about the lives of labourers’

According to Pune-based activist and general secretary of Bandhkam Mazdoor Sabha, Nitin Pawar, a “nexus” exists between politicians, buildings and the administration.

“Builders force construction workers to work as slaves. When such incidents occur, they try to save face but after some time, it’s back to square one,” he says. “There have been instances where politicians ask the administration to keep their hands off builders and take action against contractors. In one such case in the past, a former Maharashtra chief minister telephoned the police from New York and told them not to do anything to the builder, and to instead take action against the contractor and supervisor.”

Pawar says according to the Contract Labour Act, if a contractor fails to provide a worker with rights, safety or anything else for which a worker is eligible, then the principal employer—the builder—must be held responsible. He points out that even worker payslips have the signature of the principal employer, directly indicating that the builder is the owner.   

In July 2018, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that “no criminal action” would be taken against “legitimate” builders and developers in case of mishap. Fadnavis said: “If there is an accident on a construction site, the builder is booked for culpable homicide. But through this law, they are getting harassed, which is not fair. An accident should be treated as an accident. We have now decided that no case would be filed against the builder in such matters. We have published a government resolution and are also instructing the police not to act.”

Pawar says, “On the one hand, Fadnavis has issued such orders. On the other, he says he is very sad about the death of labourers in the wall collapse. This is like a crocodile shedding tears.”

RTI activist Vijay Kumbhar says authorities like the Pune Municipal Corporation and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation that give permission to builders for construction. Permission is preceded by officials visiting the construction sites. “They’re well aware of rules related to safety and the working conditions of the labourers, but these guys ignore that because their palms are greased,” Kumbhar says. “The officials who visited the site of Kanchan Group definitely noticed the condition of the workers and ignored it.” 

He adds: “In the past, such incidences of wall collapse or bridge collapse have happened in the city. People have died. It doesn’t matter whoever comes to power, such incidents keep occurring. The government and administration is not worried about the lives of poor people … If some high-class or rich people or a builder had died instead of labourers, then the whole machinery would have been working 24/7 to arrest the culprits. But no one cares about the lives of poor labourers.”

Naval Kishore Ram, the district collector of Pune, admits that working conditions and worker safety need to be improved. “It’s the job of builders and construction companies to take care of the workers employed by them. I’ve conducted a meeting and told builders to act accordingly. We are taking all kinds of preventive actions to make sure no such incident occurs again.”

Ram says he’s also told the labour department to ensure that workers are provided with safe living conditions. “The corporation is visiting construction sites to see that norms aren’t violated. We have taken the strictest action against the culprits, and the police will arrest the remaining culprits soon. I am leaving no stone unturned to change the situation of the labourers.”