Rescue work begins after the City Light Hotel collapsed in Secunderabad yesterday. INSET: A schoolgirl weeps at the site of the building collapse.


IANS/Hyderabad


Thirteen people were killed and 17 injured when a hotel collapsed in Secunderabad yesterday, police said.
The two-storey City Light Hotel building on Rashtrapati Road in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad, collapsed around 6.30am yesterday.
Police, firefighting personnel and rescue workers managed to evacuate 22 people from the rubble and shifted 15 of them to the government-run Gandhi Hospital.
The condition of some of the injured is stated to be critical.
Hyderabad Police commissioner Anurag Sharma said yesterday afternoon that one more person is believed to be still trapped under the debris and the efforts are on to rescue him.
Many auto-rickshaw drivers and daily wage workers were at the hotel for their early morning tea and snacks when the structure came down.
Teams of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), firefighting personnel, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Hyderabad Metro Rail helped clear the debris. The rescue teams deployed heavy cranes to clear the rubble.
GHMC commissioner Krishna Babu supervised the rescue operation.
One of the rescued hotel workers said there were 30 workers in the building at the time of the accident. The dead include four hotel employees and two people hailing from Odisha.
Locals alleged that negligence by the municipal authorities had led to the incident.
Krishna Babu, however, said it was not a dilapidated structure and was also not among the 57 buildings in Secunderabad which were issued demolition notices.
“The buildings looked stable. The construction of a ‘bhatti’ (kiln) for haleem (beef stew) on top of the building may have weakened the structure but the exact reason will be known only after a probe,” he said.
The hotel owner was reportedly building the kiln for cooking haleem on top of the hotel terrace.
The hotel owner was injured and his condition is stated to be critical while his son died.
Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who visited the site, ordered a probe.
He later held a meeting with top officials and directed them to take steps to identify and demolish all dilapidated buildings in the city.
The government has announced Rs150000 ex-gratia each to the families of those killed. While Rs50,000 will be paid by the government under ‘Apadhbandu’ scheme, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) will provide Rs100,000.
The municipal commissioner said a case would be filed against the hotel owner. Nearly six-decade-old City Light Hotel was a popular landmark in Secunderabad. Located on the busy Rashtrapati Road, it was famous for its Iranian tea, snacks, biryani and other lip-smacking dishes.
The building crash threw traffic out of gear in the busy commercial area. Police diverted the traffic at several points, leading to long jams. Several ministers, leader of the opposition in the state assembly, N Chandrababu Naidu, and leaders of various political parties visited the site and called on the injured.