The three IAS aspirants who perished in a flood at a coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar would not have died had the authorities taken note of his complaint against the illegal commercial operation being run from the building's basement, said a civil services aspirant on Monday.

Kishore Kushwaha said he had on June 26 written a letter to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi against Rau's IAS Study Circle being run from a basement.

He said he had filed the complaint through an official website of the central government, about the coaching centre's library, which was inundated with rain water Saturday evening and led to the death of three students..

Kushwaha said he sent reminders to the government agencies on July 15 and July 22 when no action took place. All his communications failed to elicit any action.

Kushwaha, who prepared for civil services exam at a coaching centre in Delhi, said many libraries and classes, not only in the Rajinder Nagar area but also in Mukherjee Nagar, and other coaching hubs like Kota, Indore, and Patna were being run from basements of buildings, imperilling lives of lakhs of students.

"This incident was really heart-wrenching and devastating. The coaching operators bribe civic body officials to run libraries and classes in the basements," he alleged.

"Had action been taken on my first complaint on June 26, three lives could have been saved," he said.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.