Police arrested three, including a junior engineer and a supervisor, after 25 people were killed and 17 injured when the roof of a shelter at a crematorium in Uttar Pradesh’s Muradnagar collapsed on Sunday.
The incident occurred when several people had taken shelter under the newly built structure while it was raining. The dead, all of them men, were mostly relatives or neighbors of Jai Ram, who was being cremated at the time, authorities said.
The police registered an FIR against junior engineer Chandrapal, supervisor Ashish, EO Niharika Singh, contractor Ajay Tyagi and others. The FIR has been registered under Sections 304, 337, 338, 427 and 409 at the Muradnagar Police Station.
Yesterday, rescue teams searched the building’s rubble for hours to make sure no more victims were trapped there. Local people were the first to arrive at the cremation ground in the Ukhlarsi village of Muradnagar in the Ghaziabad district, adjacent to the national capital.
Police followed by a unit from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) also arrived at the scene, pulling the dead and wounded out of the rubble. “Up to 24 people have been killed and 17 others injured in the incident,” said District Magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey. At least 18 of them had been identified overnight.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed their regret at the deaths. “I express my condolences to the near and dear people of those who lost their lives in this accident, and I also hope a speedy recovery of the injured,” Modi tweeted in Hindi.
Adityanath announced Rs 2 lakh as financial aid for the families of each murdered man. The prime minister also ordered the Meerut division commissioner and the additional director general of the police zone to submit a report on the incident.
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