Reserve Inspector (RI) Surendra V Singh said that the roof portion caved in at 9.30 pm when police officers were resting in the verandah. (Representational Image)

One constable died and three others were injured on Monday after a roof portion of a “dilapidated” barrack at the Reserve Police Lines in Kanpur collapsed.

The three injured policemen — Head Constable Rakesh Kumar (1989-batch), Constable Amrit Lal (1998-batch) and Constable Manish (2011-batch) — were admitted to a hospital and were stable. The deceased, Arvind Yadav, was from the 1995-batch.

Police officials posted at the police lines said the building was quite old and was probably built in the early 1910s.

In a letter to Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi, IPS officer Amitabh Thakur said that despite repeated complaints against the unsafe building, no action was taken. He requested the secretary to fix the responsibility for negligence. Thakur also demanded Rs 1 crore in compensation for the deceased’s family and Rs 5 lakh for the injured.

However, DIG (Kanpur Nagar) Preetinder Singh denied that the building was dilapidated.

“The building is not very dilapidated. The roof of the ground floor collapsed on Monday night. Only a portion of the verandah roof has collapsed, not the whole barrack. The incident happened in barrack number one. One of the policemen who were on the ground floor sustained serious injuries and succumbed on Monday night,” he said. Singh visited the injured policemen on Tuesday afternoon.

Reserve Inspector (RI) Surendra V Singh said that the roof portion caved in at 9.30 pm when police officers were resting in the verandah. “We have gotten the whole building vacated and shifted police officers to other barracks,” added Singh. The rescue operation lasted for three hours.