Day after fire at Crystal Tower: Builder cheated us, say residents

With nowhere to go, many residents, especially in the lower floors, remained in the building on Wednesday night even though power supply had been disconnected following the blaze.

Outside Crystal Tower on Thursday. Ganesh Shirsekar

A DAY after four persons were killed in a fire that broke out in the 12th floor of Crystal Tower in Parel, many residents said on Thursday that they had been cheated by the developer while purchasing their flats in 2012.

“We were cheated by the developer,” said Advocate Jayshree Patil, who owns a flat on the 16th floor of the building. She said that at the time of selling the flat, the developer had claimed to have obtained an occupancy certificate for the building.

Completed in 2012, Crystal Tower is a redeveloped building. It replaced a ground-plus-three storey chawl building. Now, the ground-plus-16 storey building has flats of different sizes. “The first 11 floors have families rehabilitated from the earlier building. The upper floor flats were sold for Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore each. Many are still paying monthly instalments on the loans they had taken to buy the houses,’ said Patil. The flats on the first 11 floors measure 400 sqft while the flats on the upper floors are between 800 and 1000 sqft.

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Residents said that it was only in 2017, after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation issued a notice regarding violations, that they came to know about the irregularities associated with the building. “Since then, residents have called several meetings to discuss the issues, but the developer never turned up,” Patil added. With nowhere to go, many residents, especially in the lower floors, remained in the building on Wednesday night even though power supply had been disconnected following the blaze.

A fifth-floor resident said a few stayed back in the hospitals where their relatives had been admitted, while some went to friends’ houses. On Thursday, the flat owners started collecting Rs 10,000 from each family to help the affected residents.

“In order to discuss the issue of clearing debris from the compound, we will meet BMC officials on Friday. For how many days can we stay at a friend’s place?,” asked 15th floor resident Dhyaneshwar Bhamre. The businessman who was not at home at the time of the blaze said: “I bought the flat in 2013 for around Rs 1.5 crore and I never thought that I would have to go through such a disaster.”

Some residents said the government should provide them with alternate accommodation. “We are not restricted from entering the building, so, many people stayed back. We have planned to meet the chief minister and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray asking them provide us with accommodation till the time the building’s problems are fixed,” said resident Gunaratna Sadavarte.

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