A large chunk of the sixth floor had fallen all the way to the first floor, killing two women, at tower D. (Express Photo/ File) A day after the managing director of Chintels India tweeted that “as per preliminary investigations, the mishap occurred during renovation work by a contractor being carried out by a resident in his apartment”, the homeowner said this was an attempt to make him a “scapegoat”.
Prashant Solomon, the Chintels MD, had stated Friday: “Upon preliminary investigations, we have come to know that the mishap occurred during renovation work by a contractor being carried out by a resident in his apartment. We had conducted a structural audit last year when complaints first came. We will be initiating a second structural audit at the earliest.”
A large chunk of the sixth floor had fallen all the way to the first floor, killing two women, at tower D.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Deepak Kapoor, owner of house D-603 in Chintels Paradiso, who lives in Bengaluru, said that he took possession of the flat in 2019 and had, for a long time, complained to the builder and the society’s manager over emails about the poor construction quality and the need for repairs.
The owner said after his repeated complaints of sub-standard construction quality materials in his flat with floor tiles, walls and pillars having cracks, the builder started repair work in his flat on February 1 and agreed to replace defective tiles, repair the floor and pillars. “I did not employ any contractor for the repairs as has been alleged in the statement by the builder. No interior work and no other internal wall change was done by me. I have documentary evidence that the repair work was done by Chintels. I have sent several emails to the builder and society manager. After several emails, the builder started work in the flat. First, some renovation work was done in the balcony, which took 8-10 days, and from February, work started on replacing the flooring since tiles were poor. I was unable to rent out the flat due to the issues,” claimed Kapoor.
He said that after seeing Solomon’s tweet, he wrote an email to the builder stating that they were misrepresenting facts. “I have been residing in Bengaluru. After I got possession, I rented the flat but every tenant complained of substandard construction. The tiles used to crack when one stepped on them. The builder used to do patchwork, but that was a stop-gap arrangement. The last tenant had vacated the flat in October 2021.
In an email, I had told the builder that I would stop paying monthly maintenance charges if repairs were not made, following which he agreed,” he said.
Kapoor said that he learnt of the collapse around 10 pm on Thursday.
“I saw that there was a lot of activity on the society’s WhatsApp group. This is when I found that the portion of the house had collapsed all the way down to the first floor and my house had become debris. I then contacted other residents. There was panic. Action should be taken against culprits,” he said.
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