Lucknow: Five members of a family, including three children, died when the roof of their house collapsed in Anandnagar railway colony under Alambagh police station here on Saturday morning.
Police said the house had been declared ‘abandoned’ and the family had been issued a notice by railways to vacate it.
The deceased were identified as Satish Chandra (41), his wife Sarojini Devi (35) and their three children Harshit (13), Harshita (10) and Ansh (5).
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief over the loss of lives.
JCP, law and order, Upendra Agarwal, said the incident occurred in the wee hours of Saturday but locals came to know about it in the morning and informed the police. “Teams of police, fire department, NDRF and SDRF got information around 8am. They cleared the debris and took out the bodies which were sent to a hospital for postmortem,” he said.
Police will speak with railway officials about the safety of other buildings in the colony, JCP said.
SHO, Alambagh, BC Tiwari, said the house was allotted to Satish’s parents Ram Chandra and Ram Dulari who worked as grade 4 employees in the railways. After the death of his parents, Satish moved into the house with his family in 2013, the SHO said.
Senior divisional commercial manager, Northern Railway, Rekha Sharma, said the house was to be demolished since it had been declared ‘abandoned’. It was 40 years old and on the brink of collapse. “Satish was not an employee of the railways. It will be probed why Satish was allowed to live in the house after the death of his parents since he was not a railway employee,” she added.
The rescue work took hours as hundreds of personnel were deployed along with cranes and sniffer dog squads. Satish’s elder Amit was inconsolable as he arrived at the spot.
