Thane building collapse: Fraudsters claim bodies to grab compensation

Incidents of children being victimised are not new in India. But this time around, some people seem to have flouted all boundaries of humanity to earn money - by claiming relations with children who have died in the Thane building collapse just to claim compensation being offered by the government. A Mumbai Mirror story says five unclaimed bodies and two injured kids, who have lost their entire families in last week’s Mumbra crash, have become targets for cheats eyeing the monetary compensation declared by the government for the families of those who died or sustained injuries in the tragedy. [caption id=“attachment_696262” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The four-year-old miracle survivor of the Thane building collapse. Image: ibnlive[/caption] The government has declared a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the families of those who lost their lives and Rs 50,000 to the injured. According to the report, many attempts have been made in the last week to claim the bodies and pocket the compensation amount. But doctors at the Thane Civil Hospital have alerted the police and now the bodies are under the strict vigil of the cops. On Tuesday, a man reportedly turned up at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Hospital in Kalva claiming he was related to a five-year-old girl whose body is lying in the hospital. When the hospital authorities sought documentary proof, he left the hospital saying he would return with the papers. He never did. Another man who claimed to be related to two girls whose bodies were at the Thane Civil Hospital also left the place when he was asked to bring a photograph of the victims. “We are extremely alert and all possible precautions are being taken to ensure that bodies are handed over only after a series of checks to authenticate claims," Thane Police Commissioner K P Raghuvanshi told Mirror. Read the Mumbai Mirror story here. Mumbai has the second highest crime ratio against children in the country just after Delhi. The begging mafia or gangs involved in child trafficking– children are often kidnapped for one sole motive– earning money. The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau states that over 60,000 children go missing every year in India — that’s one child every eight minutes or seven every hour. Of these, on an average more than 22,000 are not found. Seventy-four persons, including a large number of children, were killed when a seven-storey under-construction illegal building collapsed at Shil-Phata in Mumbra on 4 April. Meanwhile, two more arrests have been made by the Thane Police in connection with the Mumbra building collapse case. The arrest of suspended Assistant Municipal Commissioner of the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) Shyam Thorbole and Hadis Ulla Chowdhury, a partner of the builders earlier arrested by the Thane Police, has taken the number of those in police’s custody for the tragedy to 15. On Tuesday, police had arrested Executive Engineer Subash Rawal and the Deputy Engineer Ramesh Inamdar in connection with the incident. Builders Abdul Salim Aziz Siddiqui and Jameel Ahmad Jajaluddin Shaikh, who constructed the structure, are among those arrested.