Gachibowli site seized, work resumed Friday. Then it fell
Two workers died when a seven-storey under-construction building in Anjaiah Nagar, Gachibowli, collapsed around 1 pm on August 22. Civic officials say they had seized the site four months ago; work restarted the day before the collapse.
Rescue teams examine the debris of the collapsed building in Anjaiah Nagar, Gachibowli.
A seven-storey under-construction building with a penthouse collapsed in Anjaiah Nagar, Gachibowli, at about 1 pm on Saturday, August 22, killing two workers and injuring two people in adjoining apartments, according to the Telangana Fire Department’s account carried by PTI.
Police identified the deceased as labourers from Madhya Pradesh who were laying tiles. Reports name them as Umesh Kare, 34, and Mopat/Mahabub Mopat, 42; spellings require confirmation from police or hospital records. Fire and rescue teams used a Victim Location Camera to recover the bodies from the debris, and advised some residents of adjacent buildings to stay out overnight pending a stability assessment on August 23, Regional Fire Officer Sudhakar Rao said.
The sharpest question lands on enforcement. Cyberabad Municipal Corporation commissioner G. Srijana said the building “had been seized four months ago, but construction work resumed on Friday” — one day before the collapse. If that timeline holds, someone treated a seizure like a suggestion. A police case has been registered against the plot owner and building contractor; FIR details were not published in the reports reviewed.
HYDRAA commissioner A.V. Ranganath said the structure — on a plot he estimated at 50–60 square yards — sat near a nala and lacked mandatory setbacks, and that nearby buildings showed similar alleged violations. A Telugu report attributes claims about “builder Sajid’s” other buildings to what local residents were saying, not to an official finding. Whether the project had a sanctioned plan, and for how many floors, is not on the record in the material reviewed.
No public response from the owner, contractor or plot owner to the permitting and enforcement questions was found on the record. The BJP-led Centre will not fix municipal enforcement for us, and the Congress ecosystem’s sermonising about “urban governance” doesn’t hold up under a fallen slab. Telangana needs the files — the seizure order, the sanction (or the lack of it), and who greenlit work on Friday — on the table now.