THANE: Under mounting pressure to act against those responsible for the Mumbra building crash which has claimed 75 lives and left 65 others injured, the state government cracked the whip on Saturday.

After nabbing two of the builders of the Shilphata building Jamil Qureshi (from UP) and Salim Shaikh (from Thane) during the day, the Thane crime branch late at night arrested suspended deputy civic commissioner Deepak Chavan, assistant municipal commissioner Balasaheb Andhale, NCP corporator Hira Patil and Daighar assistant sub-inspector Sayed for their alleged involvement in the illegal housing industry in the Shilphata area.

The four arrested at night are understood to have been involved with the builders who had constructed the seven-storey building at Lucky Compound which crashed on Thursday, additional police commissioner Milind Bharambe told TOI. This is probably the first time that the state has initiated criminal proceedings against senior civic authorities, police officials and an elected representative for being part of the unholy nexus with contractors and builders in the locality.

An offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 of the IPC has reportedly been registered against the all those arrested as well as unspecified persons who were partners, contractors and architects responsible for the collapse of the building.

Thane civic body begins razing illegal buildings

Rescue operations that were called off around noon were said to have resumed late in the evening after another body was pulled out. The TMC also began demolishing illegal buildings, including the one adjacent to the collapsed structure. Besides, police raided the Kausa residence of one of the five partners, Malik Mohammed Iliyas, and recovered incriminating documents related to land transactions and sale deeds.

“We arrested builder Jamil Qureshi from his hometown Siddharth Nagar in UP and his partner Salim Shaikh from Thane on Saturday. They have been booked for culpable homicide and we will arrest their partners, the contractors and the architect involved in the construction,” Bharambe told TOI.

At Kausa, a police team broke open the residence of Iliyas and retrieved several papers which will be used as evidence against the seven partners of the firm that is said to have built the illegal building.

Civic authorities, too, began demolishing another illegal 7-storey building next to the one that came down on Thursday.

Rescue operations headed by a team of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were called off on Saturday after the authorities claimed they had dug 8 metres below the ground, right up to the foundation of the ill-fated building, and extracted all the victims and survivors from the rubble.

But locals said the search resumed late in the evening after one more body was dug out. A forensic team arrived at the site on Saturday and were seen taking samples of the material used for construction. Furious locals now want the civic administration to pay for “the criminal lapse of duty” .

“If the administration is really serious about waging a war against the illegal housing industry, it should act against the top bureaucracy that has ignored repeated pleas to pull down illegal structures,’’ said activist Mangal Patil.

Relatives of missing victims shuttled between Thane civil hospital and Chhatrapati Shivaji Hospital in Kalwa, inspecting the morgues. Hakimuddin Khan, who works as driver, is looking for his seven-year-old niece Shibaanjum Khan . Irfan Sayyed, too, was looking for a relative. Four bodies in Kalwa hospital and 10 in the civil hospital are yet to be identified. Dr Datta Maraskolhe of the Kalwa hospital, said, “Three are of women and one male.”

Thane collector P Velarasu held a meeting to identify the owners of the site, Lucky Compound, after Thane civic officials sought to shift the blame on the state, saying the land belonged to the forest department.