NEW DELHI | September 10, 2026 — Delhi Police has arrested the operator of a paying guest facility housed in the building that collapsed in Satya Niketan on September 6, killing seven people, and is investigating whether he ran seven similar facilities in the area under the name Hostel Daze.
Police identified the operator as 31-year-old Shudhanshu Lovneesh. According to the police investigation reported by Times of India, Lovneesh had taken four floors of the collapsed building on lease with his associate Shubham Tyagi in August last year. The monthly rent was Rs 1.05 lakh. Tyagi is absconding.
Lovneesh reportedly told investigators that he and Tyagi entered the paying guest accommodation business in Satya Niketan in 2022. Police are examining his wider operation and his claim that several other operators were also running such facilities from old buildings taken on lease in the area.
A Delhi court on Wednesday remanded Lovneesh, building owner’s son Mahesh Gupta and contractor Sanoj in police custody for two days. Gupta was produced after an earlier two-day remand ended, while police had sought three days of custody for all three to question them and confront them with building owner Hariram Gupta, 81, and his wife Urmila, 75. The couple had been sent to 14 days of judicial custody on Monday.
Investigators are also examining work carried out in the building before the collapse. Police said Sanoj told them that rainwater had been flooding the basement for eight to 10 days. Three truckloads of construction debris were allegedly used to raise the basement level to the height of the ground floor.
Police also confirmed that a retaining wall on the ground floor had been removed to merge two shops. Four additional floors had already been constructed on what investigators described as a weak foundation. The removal of the wall is being examined as the final structural alteration before the building collapsed.
Sanoj allegedly told police that Mahesh Gupta had engaged him for the work around 10 days before the incident. He was reportedly being paid Rs 2,800 a day, while labourers received Rs 800 daily. Sanoj was apprehended in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh, on Tuesday, and the labourers involved in the work are also being questioned.
Police said Lovneesh reached the collapse site shortly after the incident but left after students identified him as the PG operator. He later went to a friend’s house in Burari, where investigators arrested him.
The remand proceedings before judicial magistrate Kautuk Bharadwaj were held in camera after Lovneesh’s counsel argued that the case was at an early stage and that a media trial could prejudice the investigation. The magistrate directed media personnel to leave the courtroom. Police custody of the three accused is the immediate next step in the investigation.
