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Property tycoon Sohel Rana was detained as he attempted to cross into India and will face charges. The eight-storey Rana Plaza, like many structures around the capital Dhaka, violated building regulations.
“He is the one most responsible for the accident. The building was declared abandoned. But he forced the garment factories and workers to work on the building,” Rapid Action Battalion chief Mukhlesur Rahman told AFP. After being arrested at a border crossing with India, Rana was flown back to Dhaka by helicopter and paraded before the press.
At the site of the collapsed building, hundreds of rescuers continued the grim and painstaking task of searching for survivors. As Rana’s arrest was announced, garment workers and relatives of the missing cheered and began shouting “Hang Rana! Hang the killer!”
Another two people were pulled out alive after daybreak yesterday and later a woman’s feeble cries were detected, with efforts to tunnel through the debris to reach her being beamed live on television as doctors stood by.
But slowly the focus was turning from one of rescue to clean-up, with the ever-growing stench of decomposition indicating many more bodies will be found once heavy lifting and earth-moving equipment gets to work.
By Sunday evening, the confirmed death toll had reached 377, according to deputy administrator of Dhaka district, Zillur Rahman Chowdhury.
About 2,500 people have been rescued from the scene of the disaster, some only after undergoing amputations to free them from the pancaked slabs of reinforced concrete.
The tragedy has once again focused attention on the poor safety conditions in the US$20 billion Bangladeshi garment industry, which is the world’s second biggest after China, supplying many big Western clothing brands.
Britain’s Primark and Spain’s Mango have acknowledged their products were made in the block, while an AFP reporter found shirts labelled “United Colors of Benetton” in the debris.
The Italian group has denied having a supplier in the building.
The accident has prompted fresh accusations from activists that Western firms place profit before safety by sourcing their products from a country where textile workers often earn less than US$40 a month.
Meanwhile, part of a five-storey residential building collapsed in the centre of the northeastern French city of Reims yesterday, killing two people and injuring at least 10, officials said.
The collapse, which left several apartments dangling in open air, may have been caused by a gas explosion and investigations were continuing, regional official Michel Bernard told BFM-TV. The casualty toll was provisional and could rise, he said. Around 10 of the 40 apartments in the 1960s-era building were affected by the 11.15 a.m. (5:15 a.m. EDT) collapse. “There is a lot of rubble to clear,” he said. — AFP/Reuters.
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