‘Wish could’ve spoken to him one last time’: Wife of man killed in Greater Noida buildings collapse

Ranjana Bhumali was trying desperately to reach her husband, Ranjeet Bhumali, over the phone on Tuesday night. “I was trying to call him but the network was poor. After a few hours, we came to know that the building he was living in had collapsed,” she said. Ranjeet was one of the nine people killed in the twin building collapse in Greater Noida’s Shahberi village on Tuesday night.

“I wish the call had gone through and I could have spoken to him one last time,” Ranjana said.

Forty-five-year-old Ranjeet, a native of Malda, West Bengal, was working as a mason at the under-construction building which collapsed along with the adjacent five-storeyed building. Ranjana and their three children lives in Jagatpuri area of Delhi.

“Father used to visit us once a week as he had to stay in Shahberi for work. He spoke to us almost every night. Yesterday (Tuesday), we were trying to call him but the network was bad. We never knew that his visit home last week would be his final one. We are three siblings and we were dependent on him for everything,” Ranjeet’s daughter Kiran Bhumali, a first year Delhi University student, said.

The family identified Ranjeet’s body on Wednesday morning and Ranjana has not stopped crying since then. She has demanded that the government provides means of livelihood to her family.

“We want that people responsible for such incidents are punished. We also want the government to take care of our family as we were dependent on our father. Now who is going to take care of our day-to-day needs?” Kiran said.

Officials from the labour department met Ranjana and the children to find out if Ranjeet was hired and paid as per the labour law. “So many officials and media people are asking us questions but we are clueless about our future,” Kiran said.

Many labourers who were working in the under-construction building may still be buried under the debris, an official said.