A game of cricket inside the corridors of the defunct Jubilee Mill spelled doom for the children of Zakeria Bunder, Sewri, after a wall collapsed and crushed five of them on Saturday.
Sufiyan Noor Mohammad Shah (18), Taufiq Ayub Shaikh (18), Saif Ali Shah (11), Gulam Moinuddin Majiulla Khan (12) and Atiq Hassan Ali Chaudhary (12) were playing cricket inside the mill compound along with their friends, when a 40-foot wall started crumbling. While their friends managed to escape, the others did not get enough time to escape and were trapped under the debris.
Fire brigade officials were called in, and the children were extricated and rushed to KEM Hosptial. However, they were declared dead on admission.
Rabiyan, brother of Sufiyan, said, “We were playing when soil started falling from the wall, but we thought it was due to the rains and continued our game.”
Harshad Kale, assistant municipal commissioner, F-south ward, said that prima facie heavy rains over the last couple of days along with strong winds led to the wall collapse.
Local residents however alleged that the police and fire brigade officials reached late, and that they were forced to start rescue operations on their own. “Had the fire brigade officers reached on time, the lives of at least two or three children would have been saved,” said S.S. Shaikh, a local.
According to civic records, the mill shut down in 1981 and since then, it has been lying vacant. Only recently, a private developer has bought the place and the ground in which the incident happened was handed over to the Mhada.
Engineers from the building proposal department of the BMC are inspecting the structural stability of the other portions of the mill. If it is found that no necessary steps were taken by the owner for the safety of the structure, a notice will be sent to him, said civicofficials.