For students coming to Delhi University’s South Campus from across the country, Satya Niketan is one of the neighbourhoods where many find paying guest accommodation close to their colleges.
On Sunday afternoon, September 6, that familiar student neighbourhood became the site of a devastating building collapse when a five-storey PG accommodation came crashing down, trapping students and workers beneath the rubble.
The building, known as Hostel Daze, collapsed at around 1.30 pm. Early reports suggested that as many as 30–50 people, mostly students, could have been inside the building when it collapsed.
Delhi Fire Service, Delhi Police, and NDRF teams were deployed, while students and local residents also rushed to the site to help. Rescue operations continued into Monday. The latest reporting confirms 12 people rescued and seven dead, while NDRF said it did not have a specific confirmed figure for how many people were trapped.
But behind those numbers were students who had come to Delhi to study, friends trying to locate them, siblings travelling across states and classmates waiting outside hospitals with photographs on their phones.
Here are the students whose stories have emerged from the collapse so far.
The students who died
- Abhishek Kumar – Abhishek Kumar, a student of Motilal Nehru College from Varanasi, lived on the fifth floor of Hostel Daze.
His friend Krish told ThePrint that he had repeatedly warned Abhishek about the condition of the building and asked him to leave. But another PG would have cost more.
“He used to stay on the fifth floor of Hostel Daze. I had told him so many times to leave that place because of its condition, but that is all he could afford,” Krish told ThePrint.
Krish said Abhishek was paying around ₹15,000 for food and accommodation.
“They charged Abhishek Rs 15,000 for food and stay, and since any other PG would charge more than that, he kept staying,” he said.
Abhishek was pulled from the debris and taken to AIIMS Trauma Centre with severe injuries. His friend Shaurya Pratap Singh told Hindustan Times that he had to reassure Abhishek’s father while waiting at the hospital.
“Uncle, we are here at the hospital, and we will all be here only. I have seen Abhishek, and he is doing alright. Please come fast and come safely,” Singh told him.
Abhishek later succumbed to his injuries.
- Akshat Singh Yadav – Akshat Singh Yadav, a second-year student of Delhi University’s PGDAV College, was among those who died in the Satya Niketan collapse.
His family travelled from Katni, Madhya Pradesh, to AIIMS Trauma Centre after learning of his death. According to NDTV, Akshat had spoken to his mother over a video call just two days before the collapse.
Akshat was also preparing for the UPSC examination. His family said he dreamed of entering the civil services and had often told his father that he would become an officer.
His friend Yugank Goyal said students from PGDAV College had reached Satya Niketan after learning that one of their classmates was trapped inside.
A family member also described the anxious hours before they learnt that Akshat had been found: “We weren’t able to contact him. We kept calling him, but his phone wasn’t connecting. We were also very anxious for a long time. Around 3 to 3:30 am, we received information that he had been found.”
They reached AIIMS early Monday morning and identified him.
- Yuvraj Soni – Yuvraj Soni, 20, was a second-year B.Com student at Motilal Nehru College from Durg, Chhattisgarh. Reports from Durg said he had returned to Delhi only a few days earlier after spending the holidays at home.
According to reports from his hometown, Yuvraj had been speaking to his childhood friend Aryan on the phone when the collapse happened. Yuvraj’s voice suddenly stopped. Aryan later reached the site and searched for his friend before receiving confirmation of his death.
- Arpit Jaj – Arpit Jaj, 18, was a second-year B.Com student at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College and a native of Dewas, Madhya Pradesh.
In the hours after the collapse, his friends did not know where he was. One of them reached AIIMS carrying Arpit’s photograph and tried to find him among the injured.
“I received a call from his mother around 2 PM that Arpit was in the PG. Since then, I have enquired everywhere but have no idea where he is,” the friend told ThePrint.
The search became increasingly difficult as hospitals began showing friends photographs of unidentified victims.
“The hospital authorities have shown me pictures of unidentified people, but they are all unrecognisable; I can’t understand anything anymore,” the friend said.
Arpit’s body was subsequently recovered and identified by his father. His friends said he had complained about seepage and dampness in his room before the collapse. He had returned to Delhi after travelling home for Raksha Bandhan.
For his friends, the wait that had begun with his photograph being carried through hospital corridors ended with the confirmation of his death.
The students who were rescued
- Aditya Kumar – One of the clearest accounts of what it was like to be trapped inside the collapsed building came from a short video recorded by Aditya Kumar, a second-year B.Com student at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College.
Trapped under the debris, Aditya recorded a roughly 10-second video. The clip showed him alive beneath the rubble, and within minutes it began circulating through student and university WhatsApp groups.
Adi Nain, an NSUI leader, told The Indian Express that he received the video at 4.50 pm from a former DUSU office-bearer and rushed to the site.
The message accompanying the video was blunt: “Vo phasa hua hai abhi, zinda hai, please usko bahar nikaal lo” – “He is stuck inside, he’s alive, please get him out.”
At first, nobody knew who the student was or exactly where beneath the rubble he was trapped. The video was forwarded from one person to another as students and volunteers tried to identify him.
“By then, the video was widely circulated, and everyone was trying to identify him,” Dishant, who had received the video through his brother, told The Indian Express.
Delhi Fire Service sources later confirmed that the student in the video was Aditya. He was rescued and taken to the hospital.
Fire Service sources told The Indian Express, “He has been admitted to the hospital and is under observation. He is not in a critical condition.”
Aditya’s rescue was therefore not just a story of emergency teams reaching a trapped student. It was also a chain of students and former student representatives passing around a few seconds of video until it reached people who could act on it.
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- Neeraj Bawa – Neeraj Bawa, a BA student at Motilal Nehru College (Evening), had come to Delhi from Jammu.
After becoming trapped, Neeraj managed to contact his friends and share his location. His friend Anmol Yadav said they received a call from him while they were on their way to the PG.
“Please save me, or else I’ll die,” Neeraj told them, according to Yadav.
Neeraj also shared his live location. His friends tried to reach him but were stopped from going close to the building.
“We would have located him, but the police didn’t allow us to go near the building,” Yadav said.
Neeraj was eventually rescued and taken to the hospital. Yadav, who accompanied him in the ambulance, said Neeraj was conscious but could barely speak and had suffered most of his injuries to his lower body. He was reported to be stable.
His elder brother travelled from Jammu with two cousins after hearing about the collapse.
- Shantanu – Shantanu, an evening student at Motilal Nehru College from Churu, Rajasthan, was sleeping inside the PG when the building collapsed.
His friend Sunny Dedha rushed to the site after receiving a call about the collapse.
“He is critically injured and has been admitted to the Trauma Centre. I got a call from my friend about half an hour ago and rushed here immediately,” Dedha said.
- Ayaan – Ayaan, another student from Motilal Nehru College, suffered minor injuries to his head and limbs and was recovering at Safdarjung Hospital, according to The Indian Express.
His case was among those that showed how survivors were being distributed across different hospitals while friends and families moved between them, trying to establish who had been rescued.
Other injured students
The list of affected students was still growing as rescue and identification operations continued.
Hindustan Times reported that students and friends were also receiving calls from inside the building before rescue teams could reach everyone. Motilal Nehru College student Divy Upadhyay said some students managed to send videos and make calls from inside.
“Three students managed to share videos from inside, and a few others were initially able to make calls,” Upadhyay said.
A 19-year-old man was also admitted to VMMC and Safdarjung Hospital with minor injuries and was reported to be stable, according to hospital updates.
The students whose whereabouts were being sought
- Pawan Yadav – Pawan Yadav, 21, was a student of Motilal Nehru College who was inside the building when it collapsed.
His sister Priyanshi reached the AIIMS Trauma Centre carrying his photograph and began asking hospital staff and police officers the same question: “Have you seen Pawan Yadav?”
She had spoken to Pawan the previous night. After the collapse, his phone could not be reached.
“They are saying he is not here,” she said.
“His phone was unreachable after the incident. His roommate’s phone was unreachable too,” Priyanshi said.
The search for Pawan became part of the larger uncertainty outside AIIMS, where parents, siblings and friends were scanning ambulances and asking hospitals for information.
- Shivam – Another student whose whereabouts were being sought was Shivam, a student of Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College from Dewas, Madhya Pradesh.
His classmate Yuvraj told ThePrint that Shivam had taken an early-morning train back to Delhi and had planned to rest before they booked tickets for an upcoming Mika Singh concert.
“He told me he would get some rest and then we would book tickets for Mika Singh’s upcoming concert,” Yuvraj said.
Yuvraj said Shivam’s mother told him she had last spoken to her son around 1 pm. He then went to Satya Niketan and later checked Army Hospital, Safdarjung, and AIIMS.
“I went to Army Hospital, Safdarjung, and AIIMS, but no one knows where he is,” Yuvraj told ThePrint.
At the time of that report, Shivam’s whereabouts remained unconfirmed.
Friends became rescuers
The rescue effort was not limited to emergency personnel. Students and residents nearby began clearing debris and helping identify people trapped inside.
DU student Umanshi Lamba told The Indian Express that she saw students pulling more than 10 people from the rubble.
“The most important thing right now is that information about patients be shared quickly so that their parents and relatives can be informed,” Lamba said.
She added, “Most of these students were living alone, away from home – from Uttar Pradesh, Jammu, and Rajasthan.”
That became one of the defining features of the aftermath. Students were not just waiting for information about their friends. They were helping rescue them, circulating photographs and videos, travelling between hospitals, and calling families who were hundreds of kilometres away.
An eyewitness account from the first moments
For residents nearby, the collapse initially felt like an earthquake.
“When I came out, a cloud of dust was spreading in all directions. That’s when we realised that the building had collapsed,” resident Rahul Gaur told The Times of India.
Residents and students began removing debris and trying to reach those trapped even as official rescue operations got underway. The Indian Express also reported that students and locals formed a human chain during the initial response.
What happened to the building?
The exact circumstances of the collapse remain under investigation, although early findings have raised questions about the building’s age, repair work and condition.
The structure was around 50 years old and had reportedly been vacated before renovation work began. It reopened as the men’s PG, Hostel Daze, shortly before the collapse. Preliminary findings have pointed to repair work and water accumulation in the basement as possible factors.
What action has the government taken?
The administrative response has intensified as the death toll has risen.
The MCD suspended five South Zone officials, including Deputy Commissioner Rakesh Kumar, Superintending Engineer Ranvir Singh, Executive Engineer Lalit Kumar Goel, Assistant Engineer Sunil Chauhan, and Junior Engineer Ashish Kumar.
Delhi Police registered an FIR against the building owner and others. The alleged owner, Hariram Gupta, was subsequently apprehended in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, on Monday. He is also identified as Hariram Bansal in some reports.
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta ordered a magisterial inquiry, while the government said it would move towards structural audits and safety certifications for buildings used for public purposes, including hostels and similar accommodation.
The Delhi High Court is also hearing the matter after an urgent petition was mentioned following the collapse.
But for the students and families caught up in the collapse, the story remains much more immediate than the administrative response: photographs being carried from hospital to hospital, phones that stopped connecting, messages sent from beneath concrete, and friends waiting for a name to be confirmed.
Seven people have died. Twelve have been rescued. And for families still waiting for definitive information, the search has been as much about finding a person as finding an answer.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The Indian Express, NDTV, Hindustan Times, ThePrint, The Times of India
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This post is tagged under: Satya Niketan tragedy, Satya Niketan building collapse, Satya Niketan PG collapse, Delhi PG collapse, DU students, Delhi University students, Hostel Daze collapse, Satya Niketan students, AIIMS Trauma Centre, Delhi student deaths, Aditya Kumar, Abhishek Kumar, Arpit Jaj, Akshat Singh Yadav, Neeraj Bawa, Pawan Yadav
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