Ghaziabad (UP): Twenty-four people, most of them attending a funeral, were killed and 17 others injured when the roof of a shelter at a cremation ground in Uttar Pradesh’s Muradnagar collapsed on Sunday, officials said.
Several people had taken shelter under the recently constructed structure while it rained. The dead, all of them men, were mostly relatives or neighbours of Jai Ram, who was being cremated at that time, officials said.
Rescue workers sifted through the building’s rubble for hours to ensure that more victims were not trapped there.
The local people were the first to arrive at the cremation ground in Muradnagar’s Ukhlarsi village in Ghaziabad district, adjoining the national capital.
Police followed by a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) unit also then reached the spot, pulling out the dead and the injured from the debris.
“As many as 24 people have died and 17 others have been injured in the incident,” District Magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey said….