Chennai: L.S. Prashanth holds a managerial job at an Indian multinational company now. The 34-year-old came to Chennai 12 years ago and rose through the ranks after joining as a marketing staff to hold the position he is currently in.The average middle class dream of owning a property didn’t elude Prashanth and he invested in buying an apartment for his family. All was well until June 28 last year.
Like Prashanth’s dream, many other middle class dreams were shattered this day last year when a 10-storey under construction apartment site at Moulivakkam came crashing down on a rainy evening. Sixty-one persons, mostly migrant labourers, were killed in the crash and the owners arrested and eventually let out on bail three months later. Prashanth’s eyes well up as he recalls the incidents on that fateful day. He is at the end of a tether as he continued to pay EMI for a loan for a property that doesn’t even exist now. During a media gathering to urge the government to intervene to sort out the issue of the purchasers of property that crashed last year, Prashanth even mentioned about his suicidal thoughts. This is the state of buyers who invested in the ill-fated 10-storey apartment at Moulivakkam.
“The builders were arrested; came out on bail and are going about their life as usual. The same is the case with the authorities who authorised the construction of the building. The average middle class public who did nothing wrong is left in the lurch,” said Prashanth.He and 55 others who invested in the building have formed the Moulivakkam Trust Heights Flats Affected Buyers’ Association to recover their investment.
As the tragic incident marks a year’s anniversary, there seems to be no end to their plight. Most of the buyers are salaried middle class people and this is the first house for most of them.“Even nationalised banks sanctioned our loans with their chartered engineers assuring that the building would be strong for six decades. Now, every month we are forced to pay EMI for the loan we took. With a family to run and to pay EMI for a non-existent property, you know it pains,” exclaims Ratan Mishra, a HR manager with a private firm who brought a property there.
The buyers have sought government interference requesting the Chief Minister to mediate with the builder and retrieve their investment in that ill fated building which was ironically named, ‘Trust Heights’.
