Two days after the B-wing of Kohinoor Apartment in Bhiwandi’s Balaji Nagar collapsed during unauthorised repair work, killing at least nine residents, the Bhiwandi Nizampur City Municipal Corporation (BNCMC) evacuated the complex’s remaining A-wing on Sunday and began demolishing it, according to the Free Press Journal. Ninety-eight families have been left homeless; civic records show only 36 of the complex’s 98 flats were formally registered. Police have arrested a resident accused of collecting repair funds and passing them to a contractor who died in the collapse, while the building’s original developer remains absconding.

The collapse itself was not a surprise to anyone tracking Bhiwandi’s building stock. Kohinoor had been declared dangerous by BNCMC as far back as 2020. A fresh structural audit notice went out in April 2026, placing it in the C-2A category: unsafe to occupy, repairs required before residents could return. The corporation issued eviction notices and cut electricity and water in June. Yet, per The Week, repair work continued on the ground floor with labourers present when the structure gave way close to midnight on July 31, roughly two hours after residents first heard cracking sounds.

A citywide pattern, not a one-off

What makes Kohinoor more than an isolated tragedy is the scale of the list it belonged to. A BNCMC survey completed in June 2026, weeks before the collapse, had already counted 1,790 buildings across the city as structurally dangerous, up from 1,444 the year before, according to the Free Press Journal’s reporting on the survey. Of those, 227 fell into the most severe C-1 category, meaning immediate evacuation and demolition, while another 813 were graded C-2A, the same category Kohinoor carried. The civic body’s own commissioner had ordered officials to speed up action on C-1 structures ahead of peak monsoon.

The enforcement record tells the other half of the story: of the 1,444 buildings flagged dangerous the previous year, only 69 were actually demolished. Bhiwandi, a dense powerloom town in Thane district built up rapidly with informally constructed tenements, has for years combined a large stock of ageing, unauthorised buildings with a municipal machinery that issues notices faster than it can act on them.

What it means for residents

For the thousands of families living across Bhiwandi’s C-1 and C-2A buildings, the Kohinoor collapse changes little about their immediate options. Vacating a condemned building without an alternative place to live is, for many tenants and owners in unauthorised construction, not a realistic choice. That gap explains why notices go unheeded and repairs happen informally, as they did at Kohinoor. A civic body issuing an eviction order is not the same as a city rehousing displaced families, and Bhiwandi has limited transit housing to offer in the interim.

The demolition of Kohinoor’s A-wing this week, and the arrest of a resident rather than the developer, also signals where accountability is likely to land first: on residents and informal contractors who arranged illegal repairs, rather than on the builder who put up the structure or the civic officials who issued repeated notices without follow-through.

Outlook

With the monsoon still active and 227 C-1 buildings still standing citywide, the pressure is on BNCMC to show the Kohinoor demolition is the start of faster action rather than a one-building response to bad press. Whether the corporation now moves against the remaining C-1 stock, and whether the state steps in with rehousing support, will determine if this monsoon sees another Kohinoor before it ends.

Sources: Free Press Journal, The Week, Free Press Journal (dangerous buildings survey)

This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.