The stench of death and destruction loomed in the air at the site of tragedy in Lalita Park area of Laxmi Nagar on Tuesday as relatives of victims, including an old woman, who lost her family of seven and a five year-old who lost both his parents, rushed from one hospital to another to the site of tragedy for any news of the missing persons.

Barring the dead and those affected by their deaths, everybody loves an unauthorised construction. The history of unauthorised colonies, which otherwise spell weak structures, overlooked building by-laws, huge corruption and hapless people, is a long one in the capital. And it is the nexus between the police, politician and civic agency officials, which refuses to be broken.

As the authorities continued with the hectic rescue operation in east Delhi’s Lalita Park area late on Tuesday evening, people living in buildings adjacent to the collapsed structure were allegedly forcibly evacuated from their houses by them without providing any proper accommodation.

The government is likely to dispatch advisories to states asking them to remain vigilant ahead of the anniversaries of 26/11 and Babri Masjid demolition. The home ministry is expected to ask all major cities like Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai to take adequate steps to beef up security and tighten vigil against possible terrorist strikes and attempts by anti-national elements to disturb peace.

Concerned over the building collapse in which 66 lives were lost, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday visited the victims in LNJP Hospital, which received the maximum number of cases of injuries as well as deaths.

Pilot error caused by “sleep inertia” on the part of the Serbian-born British commander Capt. Zslatko Glucika was the cause of the crash of Air India Express’ flight IX-812 at the Mangalore airport on May 22 this year that led to the death of 158 persons on board, top sources said, while citing the findings of the report of the government-appointed court of inquiry into the crash.

The Canadian makers of BlackBerry — Research in Motion — have assured the government of providing interception facilities to its BlackBerry Enterprise (BES) services.
From a stalemate over the issues for the last six months, a senior government official said, there has now been progress in arriving at a solution where the BES service

The home ministry has sought a report from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on the house collapse disaster in east Delhi. The ministry has asked the MCD to provide details such as when was the building constructed and how many floors in that building were unauthorised constructions. The ministry has already received a

The death toll in Monday evening’s building collapse at Lalita Park in Laxmi Nagar area of east Delhi climbed to 66 on Tuesday. The owner of the building, Mr Amritpal Singh, has been arrested by the east Delhi police and booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

Stating that the party would react to the CAG report relating to department of telecommunication only after studying it, the Congress on Tuesday chose to steer itself clear of the SC’s observation as to why PM Manmohan Singh did not act for long on the issue of granting sanction to prosecute Mr A. Raja in the 2G spectrum scam.