Slum girl dies as dilapidated house crumbles Slum girl dies as dilapidated house crumbles

A teenage girl was killed and a minor boy injured as an adjacent abandoned building partially collapsed early yesterday on their tin-roofed shanty in the capital's Shah Ali area of Mirpur.

The deceased is ninth-grader Kulsum Akter Nishi, 16, daughter of late Harun-ur Rashid from Sherpur while the injured is her nine-year-old nephew Raihan.

Nishi's mother Anwara Begum, sleeping across in the partitioned room, escaped unhurt. Nishi's elder brother Ismail Hossain, father of injured Raihan, was away on night shift work at a garment factory at the time of the incident.

Fire Service and Civil Defence personnel reached the scene within a short time, pulled the two victims out of the rubble and sent them to a hospital nearby.

Kulsum was pronounced dead there while Raihan was given treatment for minor injuries, said Anwar Hossain, officer-in-charge of Shah Ali Police Station.

A portion of the abandoned building of Government Shelter Centre [under Department of Social Services] for vagrants tumbled down on the tin shed at around 2:30am, he added. 

Several families had been living next to the abandoned structure by building makeshift houses and they did not vacate the piece of land although they were warned of the imminent danger numerous times, the OC said, quoting shelter authorities.  

Ismail, brother of the deceased, told The Daily Star that they built the tin shed on their own next to the vagrant shelter and had been living there for years.

A staff member of the shelter told this correspondent that the building was declared abandoned several years ago and the demolition work would commence after the completion of formalities.  

The occupants of the shanties were given warnings several times, but they did not evacuate the area, he added.

This correspondent, during a visit to the spot, noticed a number of large cracks on the abandoned building and saw residents of a few other shanties moving out with their belongings.