New Delhi: The Delhi High Court sharply criticized the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Delhi University (DU) on Monday during proceedings regarding the fatal collapse of a multi-storey paying guest accommodation in south Delhi’s Satya Niketan. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia declared that institutional accountability extends far beyond the property owners, emphasizing that regulatory and academic bodies cannot escape culpability for systemic neglect. The court’s remarks coincided with the confirmation that the death toll has climbed to seven, alongside the suspension of five senior civic officials, including South Zone Deputy Commissioner Rakesh Kumar and four engineers.
Hearing a public interest litigation filed by Aniket Kumar Gupta, the Bench expressed profound grief over the loss of young lives, noting that fifty students at the threshold of adulthood were placed in direct peril due to rampant building violations and institutional complacency. Highlighting the acute deficit in institutional student housing, the court observed that Delhi University’s failure to provide adequate on-campus residential facilities forces outstation scholars into unregulated, hazardous private accommodations. The judges directed the MCD to conduct a high-level inquiry to verify whether the structure conformed to sanctioned blueprints and to identify all officers responsible for lapses in oversight, while mandating DU to submit detailed data on outstation admissions versus available university hostel berths.
Parallel to the judicial proceedings, law enforcement stepped up criminal actions against the property managers, arresting building owner Hariram Gupta, an 81-year-old retired Indian Air Force sergeant, along with his wife Urmila and son Mahesh. Hariram was apprehended in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, following a coordinated multi-team manhunt launched after he switched off his phone and fled the capital immediately after the collapse. Preliminary findings indicate that illegal structural modifications and ground-level renovation work were being executed on the aging edifice prior to its failure, prompting the court to demand an exhaustive safety audit of private student accommodations across Delhi ahead of the next hearing scheduled for September 25.
