The death toll in the Ghatkopar hoarding collapse in Mumbai rose to 16 on Thursday with rescue personnel retrieving the bodies of a retired general manager of Air Traffic Control (ATC) and his wife, officials said.

The bodies of a man and a woman were extricated from a car stuck underneath the hoarding shortly after midnight and the victims were identified to be ex-GM of ATC Mumbai Manoj Chansoria (60) and his wife Anita Chansoria (59), they said.

A Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) official said that the bodies, which were in a “decomposed state”, were taken to the nearby civic-run Rajawadi Hospital around 1 am.

An official of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said the search and rescue operation is still on at the hoarding collapse site.

“We cannot rule out the possibility that there are no more victims at the hoarding collapse site,” he said.

The whereabouts of Manoj and Anita were not known since Monday evening when they left for Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh from the ATC guest house in Western Mumbai in a red-coloured car of Tata make.

On Tuesday night his mobile location was tracked to the petrol pump on which a giant hoarding of 120 feet x 120 feet collapsed in the Chheda Nagar area during gusty winds on Monday that also left 75 injured.

An official from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) had told PTI earlier that the rescue team had spotted two bodies in a car trapped below the middle main girder of the five girders of the hoarding the same night.

Rescuers crawled to reach the car, but there was no way of retrieving the bodies unless the girder was moved, he had said.

Later, the search and rescue teams used gas cutters and other machinery to cut the interconnected girders one by one and pulled out the bodies of the couple from the car around midnight on Wednesday.

After learning that Manoj's last mobile location was at the Chheda Nagar petrol pump, family members and friends had been camping at the site fearing that he and his wife were trapped there.

The couple's son, who is settled in the USA, was expected to land here on Wednesday night, Anita's cousin had said on Tuesday.

Former colleagues described Manoj as a very down-to-earth person and a good human being.

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