One person was killed and several others were injured after a wall of an old building collapsed in Delhi’s Karol Bagh area on Friday, officials said. The incident occurred on Pyarelal Road, near Jewellers, and demolition work was going on at the site of the building, they said.
The building was described by fire officials as very old and in a dilapidated condition, they said. Its age was not immediately known. The collapse brought an emergency response from the Delhi Fire Service to the scene to search through the debris and determine if anyone else might have been trapped.
At least two or three people were rescued from the site and taken to Jeevanmala Hospital for treatment. The condition of the injured individuals and the exact number of people affected was not immediately available.
Delhi Fire Service Divisional Officer Ramgopal Meena said officials received information about the incident on Pyarelal Road. Fire personnel immediately reached the location and found that some people had already been rescued and shifted to the hospital.
"We got a call from the phone saying that there was an incident on Pyarelal Road, near Jewellers. When we arrived we saw that two to three people have already been rescued and sent to Jeevanmala Hospital. We are now searching the area again," Meena said through news agency ANI.
According to the fire official, demolition work was going on in the building when the collapse took place. The structure was in poor condition, he said, and people working there and around it were in danger.
“Demolition work was going on here. We don’t know exactly how old this building is, but it is a very old building. It was in a dilapidated state,” Meena said.
#WATCH | Delhi: Several people injured after the wall of an old building collapsed in the Karol Bagh area of Delhi.
— ANI (@ANI) August 21, 2026
Divisional Officer at Delhi Fire Service, Gopal Meena, says, "...We received the call, informing us that an incident happened on Pyarelal Road, near Jewellers.… pic.twitter.com/qVtFmodaUN
Rescue personnel were continuing the search for people at the site following the collapse and searching for more people underneath the rubble. The search was still at work to discover whether more people were trapped in the rubble, said the authorities were still searching for them.
The Karol Bagh incident has once again raised concerns about the safety of old and structurally weakened buildings in densely populated parts of Delhi. A dilapidated building can be very dangerous, particularly if demolition, renovation, or construction are being carried out.
The latest incident also comes about a month after another serious building collapse in Delhi. A four-storey under-construction building collapsed in the Rohini area, killing three people and wounding another person.
In the Rohini rescue operation, the Delhi Fire Service personnel pulled three people out of the debris, one of them injured, and two dead. In the rubble, one person was removed from the rubble by residents and taken to a hospital where doctors declared him dead.
The deceased in Rohini are 20-year-old Noorul Huda, a resident of Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh, 51-year-old Ram Dua, a resident of Sector 16, Rohini, and 42-year-old Ram, also from Sector 16. The injured survivor is 34-year-old Saddam, a resident of Dwarka in northwest Delhi.
The Rohini structure was supposedly a ground-plus-four-storey building of approximately 52 square metres in size. It was originally made up of two 26-metre DDA flats.
Following that collapse, Rohini Deputy Commissioner of Police Shashank Jaiswal said senior officials, including the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, District Magistrate, and personnel from the National Disaster Response Force, reached the site. A joint rescue operation was launched and an FIR was registered under relevant sections.
The Karol Bagh collapse is going to bring back further scrutiny of safety measures around demolition and how old buildings are now. The wall should be investigated further and the facts of the collapse will be known.
We still have no information about the victims, injuries, and circumstances of the collapse. We will also know if proper safety precautions were taken when the demolition was performed.
