The building was one of the two towers, named Faith and Belief, being constructed by Prime Sristi, a Madurai-based builder.
Following a statement from chief minister J Jayalalithaa to act tough on people responsible for the tragedy, police arrested owner of the company Manoharan and his son Muthu and charged them with culpable homicide amounting to murder.
Saturday being salary day, workers were waiting at the site to get paid. They took shelter on the ground floor of the building when it started raining around 4.30pm.
Eyewitnesses said that around 4.40pm, one of the towers shook and collapsed, burying scores of people under it. "Those in the vicinity screamed, many who were under the building just disappeared," said Appalaiah, 40, a worker who escaped by a whisker as brick and mortar came crashing down.
The first to help were a group of workers at an L&T construction site a few blocks away, followed by the fire and rescue services at 5.05pm. By 6.30pm, rescue authorities moved heavy equipment and gas cutters from metro rail to the construction site.
As a large number of victims remained trapped for more than three hours, the state government sent an SOS to the National Disaster Response Force,(NDRF) stationed in Arakkonam. The first NDRF company of 80 arrived at 8.30pm, followed by one more group of 180 men troops by 10pm. At midnight, an unspecified number of people remained trapped.
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