The operator, Shudhanshu Lovneesh told cops he and associate Shubham Tyagi had leased four floors of the building in August last year for Rs 1.05 lakh a month.
This building collapsed on Sept 6, leaving seven people dead. A Delhi court Wednesday remanded Lovneesh and two others – building owner’s son Mahesh Gupta (52) and contractor Sanoj – in two days in police custody. Police had sought three days’ custody for all three to question them and confront them with the owner of the building, Hariram Gupta (81) who retired from IAF, and his wife, Urmila (75) who had been sent to 14 days in judicial custody Monday. Sanoj told the police that he had been engaged for the work by Mahesh Gupta around 10 days before the incident and was being paid Rs 2,800 per day. The labourers engaged in the work were being paid Rs 800 daily and they too are being questioned.
Because a retaining wall on the ground floor was removed to merge two shops, police Wednesday confirmed TOI’s report that the building collapsed like a pack of cards.
Police sources said Lovneesh had reached the spot soon after the building collapsed but fled after students began to point him out as the operator of the PG. NEW DELHI: Delhi Police has arrested the man who used to run a PG facility on four floors of the building that collapsed in Satya Niketan under the name Hostel Daze. Police suspect he runs a total of seven such facilities in the area under the same name and are probing his entire operation. Four additional floors had already been built on a weak foundation and the removal of the wall was the last straw. He then rushed to a friend’s house in Burari, from where the police have nabbed him.
Mahesh was produced after his earlier two-day police remand ended. He had been apprehended from Kasganj in UP on Tuesday.