A five storey building operating as a boys' paying guest accommodation, known as Hostel Daze, collapsed in Delhi's Satya Niketan area on 6 September 2026, Sunday afternoon, killing at least two people and leaving dozens feared trapped under the rubble. Police said a PCR call was received around 1.34 pm near Nanakpura Gurdwara, close to Delhi University's South Campus. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said rescue efforts were being carried out on a "war footing," while Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu directed agencies to coordinate closely. Union Home Minister Amit Shah reviewed the situation with the police commissioner and NDRF officials.
Eight people had been pulled from the debris by evening, two of whom died and five of whom remained critical, while local residents estimated that 40 to 50 more could still be trapped, a figure police had not officially confirmed. According to reports cited by The Week, the building had also been vacated roughly a year ago and was later reopened as a functioning hostel, a detail that has not yet been officially confirmed by police or the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
Probable Reason Behind the Collapse
- Officials said repair and construction work was underway in the building's basement at the time of the collapse. An eyewitness said workers were digging out the basement to create rental space on the ground floor, and that "the pillars at the bottom were weak" even though the structure above had been reinforced.
- Locals separately said days of rain had caused water to accumulate in the basement, weakening the foundation further. The building is reported to have had around 10 to 15 rooms, with two to three students housed in each. This is the second fatal collapse tied to renovation work in Satya Niketan since April 2022, when two labourers died after a building undergoing similar unauthorised alteration came down in the same locality.
Police have registered a case against the building's owner, identified as Anand Bansal, a resident of Gurugram, with seven to eight teams working to trace him. Priyanka, a resident who has lived in the area for over two decades, said the neighbourhood has seen a steady conversion of old houses into boys' PGs, with landlords moving away after renting out their properties. "Hardly 30 per cent of the house owners actually live here," she said, adding that the collapsed PG was over 20 years old and had seen no visible maintenance in that time, though police described the structure itself as around 50 years old.
Rescue operations involved teams from the National Disaster Response Force, Delhi Fire Services, Delhi Police, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, CATS and Civil Defence, with at least a dozen fire tenders and a JCB deployed at the site. The search for those still trapped was continuing into the night, with the toll expected to rise.
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