Bengaluru: Satya, a mortuary worker at Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, had nothing to do on Wednesday evening.
No bodies were scheduled for post-mortem, so he sat inside, listening to the rain patter.
Then came the screams.
"I rushed out to see what had happened. That is when I saw the wall had collapsed," he told DH.
Satya waded into the debris alongside local residents, pulling out those trapped beneath. "Some had already died by then," he said.
Grief outside, anger within: Families wait as CM Siddaramaiah's visit blocks hospital access after wall collapse in BengaluruThe injured were rushed to the hospital. The dead came to his mortuary.
The compound wall collapse killed seven people and injured seven others.
In its wake, Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar directed the police and Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) officials to remove street vendors operating near tall, structurally vulnerable compound walls, particularly in busy areas such as Shivajinagar and Commercial Street.
But Shivajinagar MLA Rizwan Arshad pushed back. "They are all licensed vendors. We did not vacate them following High Court orders," he said, adding that many had been operating in the area for decades.
Authorities said they remained on high alert, monitoring vulnerable structures and crowd-heavy zones as intermittent rain continued.