‘Bhaiya, please mujhe bacha lo’: DUSU campaigner recalls pulling students from Satya Niketan building collapse rubble

Krishna Bhardwaj, a first responder from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh who was in Delhi campaigning for the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections, was among those who rushed to the site after the building collapsed on Sunday (September 6, 2026). He said he and around 25-30 members of his team began pulling students out of the debris even before police and fire personnel arrived.

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“We were among the first to reach the spot. There were no police or fire personnel present when we started the rescue,” he said, adding that his team alone managed to rescue four people from the rubble.

One rescue attempt has stayed with him. Mr. Bhardwaj said he was pulling a student out of the debris when the boy held his hand and pleaded, “Bhaiya, please mujhe bacha lo” (Brother, please save me).

“I told him, ‘You will be okay,’ and pulled him out,” Mr. Bhardwaj said. It was only later that he learnt that the boy he had tried to save had died. “I later found out he was the one who died,” he said, pausing and sighing.

Mr. Bhardwaj was injured during the rescue operation when a stone fell on his foot while he was trying to remove a body from the debris. He was subsequently taken to a hospital for treatment.

He recalled another rescue in which a student survived after a table fell over him and shielded him from the collapsing structure. “We found a book next to him. A table had fallen on him, and that saved him,” he said. The student was pulled out and administered CPR.

Mr. Bhardwaj said he was told that seven students had been shifted to the hospital, with the number of injured and dead still being assessed. He also alleged that many buildings in the area were unauthorised and had been operating on “fake NOCs”, leaving students living in unsafe accommodation.