Eidgah wall crash kills two people in Gujarat

The joy of Eid Al Fitr turned into deep sorrow for many when a 60-year-old man and an eight-year-old boy were killed and 30 others injured after a 20-feet portion of the 50-feet-tall compound wall of an Eidgah collapsed in Mehsana town in north Gujarat on Tuesday morning even as six more people were killed in similar incidents elsewhere in the rain-drenched state later in the day.

The police said that the tragic incident occurred when many of the 2,000 people who had gathered at the open-air ground to offer special prayers on the occasion of the Eid crowded near the 35-year-old wall after offering the namaz to put on their footwear before hurrying home.

While Asif Sandhi, who was among some boys sitting on the wall, died on the spot, Abdul Dafer succumbed to his injuries later in the hospital.

Some 50 people trapped under the debris were rescued by the fire brigade but 30 of them seriously injured were hospitalised.

The wall had weakened due to heavy rainfall in the area last week and the roads around the Eidgah were water-logged for several days.

Heaps of bricks were lying at sixes and sevens in the Eidgah compound as plans were afoot to construct a new outer wall following several complaints about the tumbledown wall.

Recently, the management raised the ground level of the Eidgah’s prayer area by filling up the ground with clay near the wall, and this also may have put pressure on the old wall.

In another crash just 35km away on the same day, five people, including two women, were killed and two injured as a wall of an old house collapsed at Bhatasan village of Kadi tehsil in the Mehsana district.

Landlord Manu Patel, had engaged the labourers for pulling down the dilapidated house as he wanted to build a new one in its place. According to police, one of its walls caved in the afternoon when some labourers were having tea with Patel’s family members.

Also in a village in central Anand district, a 20-year-old man was killed after he was trapped under the debris of a compound wall of a shop while passing by it in the evening.

mahesh@khaleejtimes.com