Hyderabad: Till recently, fish farming was being done at Kondapur site

Hyderabad: The site of the cellar collapse of an under construction building that claimed two lives on Monday in Kondapur, had for decades been used for fish farming. The land extends from the funeral park located near Kothaguda junction, to Ramalayam temple.

Fifteen years ago, Pyata Mahipal Reddy’s family used to maintain the fish farm tanks as also poultry farm and flower gardens in survey number 11 at Kondapur.
Locals who are not willing to reveal their identity said that the fish farming was being continued even during summer months earlier.

Mahipal Reddy’s parents and uncle used to allow locals to take water from their farms whenever Kothaguda village had a water shortage during summer. During the period of Congress Party’s plenary held in 2004 in Gachibowli stadium, the then government widened the road by acquiring land from this family and the family began removing fish farming tanks in the following year in view of the real estate boom, say locals.It is suspected that the fish farming tanks loosened the soil.

Commissioner of GHMC B Janardhan Reddy told this newspaper that the applicant submitted a structural stability certificate which was given by the licensed structural engineer Crux Consultancy Services.

“Based on the structural stability certificate, our staff issued approval for the construction of 3 Cellar + Ground + 3 upper floors on February 23, 2017. We shall verify whether fish farming tanks located earlier on the land led to the incident. As per the records available with the government, the land is patta land and no record is found related to fish farming. We requested JNTU to verify the matter and to submit a report,” he said.