Woman cleaning vacant flat falls 13 floors, dies

GHAZIABAD: An 18-year-old woman cleaning an unoccupied flat along with her grandmother and a friend died after falling 13 floors through a shaft at Angel Jupiter Society in Indirapuram on Thursday afternoon.
Bubli, who had been employed by the builder to clean a few unoccupied flats in a tower of the housing society, died on the spot. Sources said police were primarily treating the case as an accident.

“Bubli, her grandmother Lakshmi and friend Aarti were cleaning house number 1303 around noon when she fell through a shaft in between the flats,” her brother Chandra Prakash said. “While Lakshmi was cleaning the kitchen, Aarti was in the bedroom and Bubli was working in the hall. All of a sudden, my grandmother heard Bubli calling out to her ‘nani, nani’. Both of them rushed but could not find her. They looked down and saw the body.”

Several parts of the housing society, which has four towers of 25 floors each, are under construction. Sources said Bubli could have tried to peer over the wall that separates the shaft and fallen through. Labourers from the vicinity are often engaged by the developer to clean flats that are yet to be occupied.

Bubli’s body was first seen by a liftman, who was attracted by a loud thud. “Our liftman, Jeetender, was on the ground floor near tower A when he heard a loud thud. He rushed to check what had happened and saw the woman lying face down and blood all over,” said Pankaj Singh Chandel, a guard. “He immediately raised an alarm and called his superiors, who rushed to the spot. But the woman had died by then,” he added.

Bubli, who hailed from a village in Jhansi, had come to Noida about five months ago to work as a labourer in the multiple projects that are coming up. She lived in the slum near Angel Jupiter along with her parents, four siblings and grandmother. Most members in her family do all odd jobs to sustain themselves.

The police team probing Bubli’s death appeared to rule out any foul play. “Prima facie, it looks like an accident. But we are waiting for the autopsy report, which is likely to come tomorrow,” said Arvind Sharma, the in charge of Kanawani police outpost. “Until then, we are questioning people and her family for any leads,” he added.

The past few months have seen a number of people fall to death from highrises in Ghaziabad. Last month, a 15-year-old girl had died after falling off the 12th floor of an apartment in Govindpuram.