Baghajatin families paying home loans for homes lost forever

Kolkata: Anirban Maity, a resident of a second-floor flat of the four-storey Subho Apartment that collapsed at Baghajatin's Vidyasagar Colony on Tuesday, had registered his flat on July 25, 2023. He paid Rs 1,859 as corporation tax on Nov 27 last year for the first two quarters of the current fiscal. He had taken Rs 16 lakh as loan from a private bank to buy the flat for Rs 19 lakh.Residents of this building, like Maity, claim that the news of them being implicated in an FIR came as a rude shock. "I have a house in Chinsurah and my father recently suffered a heart attack. I do not even know how to break the news to him. I have no clue how I will repay the loan. I submitted the building plan, too. I, or any of us residents, have no idea why this building is being called illegal," claimed Maity.All through Tuesday, the building residents stayed together, away from the media. The only time they rushed towards the building was when they heard the cops and KMC workers call out to them to identify the belongings they were managing to retrieve.Ground-floor resident Shiuli Bakshi said they were now as much concerned about arranging an alternative stay and retrieving their belongings as getting all their documents in place. She had to sell her ornaments to buy this house for Rs 18 lakh.Some of the apartment owners said they wanted to seek legal counsel but did not even have any documents in their possession. "We are not aware of the illegalities the promoter was involved in. We are ordinary people who invested their whole life's savings to buy an apartment. The news of the police complaint shocked us further after the loss. We do not even have our identity proofs and other documents in our possession. Everything, including the registration deed of the house, was in our apartment," said Rupa Chowdhuri, an apartment owner.Another resident, who did not wish to be named, said the administration was targeting the residents to deflect attention from their "own wrongdoings". "The building came up so many years ago. What were the civic officials and the local cops doing? Why did they not stop the construction if it was being constructed on a filled-up pond? Now they are blaming the residents who were also conned by the promoter at so many levels," said a young resident.