NAVI MUMBAI: A 13-year-old boy died and 11 other children were injured after a portion of a building slab collapsed onto a ground-floor tuition class in Koparkhairane on Thursday evening. Civic officials said the accident occurred between 4.30 pm and 5 pm at flat number 2 on the ground floor of Vidyabhavan Apartment in Sector 2, where teacher Shyamali Choudhary (53) was conducting a private tuition class for local children. Choudhary sustained minor injuries and was discharged after primary treatment.
According to the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), 11 students were present inside the flat when a section of the slab from the upper floor suddenly gave way and came crashing down.
Emergency teams from the Vashi, Airoli and Kopar Khairane fire stations rushed to the site and began rescue operations with the help of the police. “Fire brigade teams and disaster response personnel immediately reached the spot and rescued all the children trapped under the debris. The injured were shifted to nearby hospitals for treatment,” an NMMC official said.
Five students—Nishika Dhanwade (13), Ayesha Khan (11), Devansh Pujari (12), Siddhant Gupta (9) and Rajdeep Varkhade (11)—were admitted to Apex Hospital in Kopar Khairane while Aaradhya Dhanwade was reported safe and taken home by relatives. Parth Khairnar (12), who lives on the first floor of the same building but was not a part of the tuition class, was also injured and admitted to Sai Jyot Hospital.
The other injured children, including Tanvi Sachin Srivastava (10), Rudra Pravin Patil, Prince Soni (14), Kulsum Khan (13) and Manish Mhase, were taken to Lions Club Hospital in the area. Manish, 13, who sustained severe head injuries, was shifted to the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation hospital in Vashi where he later succumbed during treatment.
Following the accident, mayor Sujata Patil, deputy mayor Dashrath Bhagat and NMMC commissioner Dr Kailas Shinde visited the site to review the situation and later met the injured students in different hospitals. Shinde also directed the civic engineering department to conduct a structural audit of the building to determine the cause of the slab collapse and assess the safety of the structure. Officials said the ceiling slab of the hall in the flat had collapsed, causing debris to fall onto the children seated below.
Shinde said the building was nearly three decades old and had 16 flats. “It was constructed in 1998 and residents have been living here for about 28 years,” he said. “It is a legally approved structure. The society had undertaken renovation work about a year ago, but no work was carried out on the roof slab.”
The NMMC has evacuated the entire building as a precautionary measure. “Temporary accommodation has been arranged for residents at Annasaheb Patil Cultural Bhavan in Kopar Khairane,” an NMMC official said.