The unauthorized structure fell onto an adjoining shanty, injuring a passerby.

MUMBAI: Five children aged 2-14 and a 32-year-old woman were killed and a passerby injured after a four-storey slum tenement collapsed onto an adjoining ground-floor shanty in Janta Nagar, Mankhurd, on Sunday night amid heavy rain.Four of the victims belonged to the same family, said sources. Local authorities said the four-storey tenement was allegedly unauthorised. Sources said both structures were on the collector’s land.Local BJP corporator Navnath Ban said the victims, Nabiya (2), Nihal (6), Aliya (7), Munaf (7), Muskan (14), and Soni (32), were pulled out of the debris after the crash around 8. 30pm and rushed to hospitals, where they were declared dead. The passerby, Rehan Ali (24), survived with a fractured hand.AIMIM corporator Vijay Ubale, who was present at the site, said two dilapidated structures that were on the verge of collapse had been vacated by residents on Sunday afternoon.

What happened

However, by evening, several locals returned to the area, following which one of the structures collapsed. He said one of the children was from a neighbouring house who had come over to play with the other kids.Ubale said the crash plunged the entire locality in chaos, making it difficult to determine whether more people were trapped under the debris. Rescue operations were still underway at the time of going to press.The on-duty medical officer at Shatabdi Hospital said a medical team from the facility was deputed to the site, and other staffers at the hospital were making further arrangements in case more casualties were brought in.Mayor Ritu Tawade called the house collapse an unfortunate incident. “People are continuing to build such unauthorised constructions. They are continuing to live there and rebuilding repeatedly despite the civic body serving them notices to vacate. Such structures are rising three to four storeys high,” she said.Meanwhile, the balcony of a first floor flat in a five-storey building in Belapur crashed on Saturday night. No one was injured. All occupants of the 17 flats of Avighna Cooperative Society in Shahabaz village’s Sector 19 were safely evacuated. There were eight wall collapses across Thane.(With inputs from BB Nayak and Manoj Badgeri)