In New Delhi, a group of employees from a healthcare artificial intelligence company gathered on Monday morning at the site of the Saidulajab building collapse, anxiously awaiting updates on their damaged servers. Alongside them, students from local coaching centres peered under the rubble, hoping to recover laptops, phones, and months’ worth of study material. Some of these students have exams scheduled in less than a month.
Two days after the collapse, which has claimed six lives so far, excavators continued to sift through concrete and twisted metal. The collapse severely damaged a portion of the AI firm’s office where servers were housed. “All our systems have been down since then,” an employee stated. Denied access to the site for safety reasons, the firm is trying to shift operations to another location. The employee narrowly escaped the collapse on Saturday, having left the office with cleaning staff just an hour before the incident.
At least 100 Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) aspirants have belongings buried under the debris. Students are hoping to recover laptops, phones, important documents, and study materials. Rescue personnel have been seen retrieving several laptops. One FMGE aspirant recalled, “We were all in the library when the collapse happened. We ran out without thinking about our belongings.”
Eyewitnesses reported that a man entered a narrow gap beside the building to retrieve his motorcycle moments before the collapse and has not been seen since. The locality is a major hub for students nationwide, with libraries and mess facilities supporting the local coaching institute economy. Medical, engineering, and civil services aspirants frequent the area daily. Arjun Tanwar, a 16-year-old student, noted that UPSC aspirants, engineering graduates, and medical students study here, some as young as 15 or 16 preparing for competitive exams like NEET. Many live in nearby PG accommodations.
Residents expressed heightened concerns about unchecked construction. Mohammad Akvar, 51, who works nearby, said, “There are several such buildings, and this has become a huge cause of worry for everyone living and working here.” The area has undergone rapid transformation. Mangeshwar Paswan, 70, a 40-year resident, observed that many seven- and eight-storey buildings have come up over the years. Several residents questioned construction quality, citing thin iron rods and improperly cemented walls visible in the debris. Others noted that a four-storey building in the same lane was constructed in just two to three months, raising safety and compliance concerns.
