Hyderabad: Officials said four floors of the collapsed structure in Nizam Colony, Tolichowki, had been illegally built. The structure was erected in the ‘cellar plus six floors’ mode. An additional penthouse was also illegally built.
On Thursday, the scaffolding collapsed and two workers died on the spot. The workers did not have safety gear to protect themselves while working on the elevation portion of the penthouse, standing on the sixth floor.
The structure was erected on around 310 square yards of land. It had permission from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation for the construction of only two floors. The rest were raised illegally.
Notably, in December 2025, the builder was served with a demolition notice. It sought an explanation from him as to why the illegally built additional floors should not be razed to the ground. Following this, the works were halted for some time but later resumed.
In a belated response on Thursday, R.V. Karnan, commissioner of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, ordered booking of criminal cases against the builder. The building is likely to be sealed on Friday.
The town planning wing of the GHMC has avoided paying attention to several areas where illegal structures have mushroomed in recent years. Worse, neither the GHMC nor the labour department made any effort to ensure periodic inspections of such sites and workers’ safety.
In the Tolichowki incident too, the workers had not been provided with safety gear, which was a gross violation of the rules.
Police on Thursday began a search for the builder, but he is absconding. GHMC officials lodged a police complaint against him.
The city is spread across the GHMC, the Cyberabad Municipal Corporation and the Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation areas. Over 50 per cent of the buildings within the GHMC jurisdiction have deviated from the sanctioned building plan, with officials mostly looking the other way.
Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, GHMC officials claimed that last year, despite political pressure, the town planning wing made multiple efforts to check rule violations. “In addition to a major reshuffle of staff and officials in this wing, as many as 27 temporary engineers had been removed from their assignments for failing to check law violations by builders,” an official said.
These engineers, who graduated from the National Academy of Construction, had been engaged by the GHMC four years ago on an outsourcing basis during the term of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi government. Their primary duty was to identify illegal constructions in their respective jurisdictions. Instead of reporting illegal constructions to the section officer, these engineers allegedly took bribes and remained silent. However, collusion by higher-level officials was also evident.
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