LESS THAN a month before the Siddhi Sai Cooperative Housing Society building collapsed, Sunil Shitap, the owner of two flats on the ground floor where he was running a nursing home, had applied for cancellation of its registration. “He applied for cancellation in July. The health department has already cancelled the registration and activities had ceased this month before the collapse happened,” said Executive Health Officer Dr Padmaja Keskar.
The Shitap Nursing Home started functioning in 2009 and was giving permission under the Bombay Nursing Home Registration Act. In 2016, the BMC health department renewed the registration after inspecting whether the nursing home had adequate doctors and medical staff. The eight-bed hospital specialised in maternity and obstetrics facilities.
The nursing home was spread over the two flats Shitap owned. It functioned under gynaecologist Dr Padma Ghade, who has been working as consultant in several Mumbai hospitals for over 20 years.
According to Dr Jayant Khandare, senior health official at the BMC, the nursing home had registration to operate until 2019 but Shitap decided to convert it into some other business establishment. “He altered the nursing home earlier for aesthetic value. We only issue registration if the nursing home is in a commercial building. He had applied for change of name and got necessary permission,” Khandare added.
Civic health officials claimed that the nursing home had adequate permissions in place till it was operating. The department had not been notified of the latest renovation under way since the registration had been cancelled. The building residents alleged that the renovation work would go on for 18 hours a day.
Assistant Municipal Commissioner of the N Ward, Bhagyashree Kapse said Shitap had applied for the permission for change of user from the building proposals department several years ago.
“According to our records, Shitap owns two flats on the ground floor and one flat on the first floor. In 2009, he had applied for permission to change the reservation to nursing home. However, a month ago, after the nursing home shut down, he had written to us asking us to cancel the licence given to the nursing home,” she said.
Kapse said Shitap had not taken any permission for the renovation work he had taken up recently. “We have no record of any application even though he should have applied for permission before making any structural changes. However, none of the residents made any formal complaint with us either. Since the building didn’t look like it was in a bad shape, there was no reason for us to suspect that it may have been structurally weak,” she said.
Several residents, such as Lalchand Ramchandani, had claimed that Shitap had tried to threaten them when they opposed the renovation work taken up in the building.
She added that she had compiled the findings into the report which she would submit to the two-member panel constituted by civic commissioner Ajoy Mehta.
