Two persons died while two dozen others were injured, 9 of them critically, when the roof of the womens’s ward on the first floor in the rear wing of Kasturba Hospital in the BHEL township in the state capital collapsed on Friday evening.
Bhopal range inspector-general of police Upendra Jain said repair work was going on in the first floor, which was empty, when the roof of the women’s ward just above came crashing down. Many attendants were seriously injured in the collapse, he added.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced an ex-gratia of `50,000 to those injured in the incident, official sources said.
There was chaos at the hospital following the collapse as a large number of people went the hospital to enquire about what had happened there.
A crane was pressed into service to clear the debris and the police had a tough time to control the crowd.
Senior government and police officials, including collector Nikunj Shrivastava, DIG Sriniwas Verma and SP Anshuman Singh supervised the rescue operation.
Leader of the Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Ajay Singh, who also rushed to the hospital, alleged the incident took place due to the “failure” of the district administration and the BHEL management. State urban administration and development minister Babulal Gaur, in whose Assembly constituency — Govindpura — the incident took place, was among the first to reach the site. Mr Gaur’s daughter in-law and Bhopal mayor Krishna Gaur also came to the site along with a team of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation that carried out the rescue operations.