Mumbai’s open drains have become death traps. Or so it appears. A seven-year-old boy drowned in an open drain on Monday, taking the total number of minors killed in similar mishaps in less than a week to three.
With still no trace of an 18 month-old boy who had slipped and fallen into an open storm water drain and was swept away on the night of July 10, a seven-year-old boy – identified as one Sumit Munna Jaiswar fell into an open drain at Rajiv Gandhi colony in Piwala Bangla locality of Dharavi in north-central Mumbai in the afternoon.
Later in the day, local residents brought the victim boy out of the open drain and rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he was declared dead upon admission. He was the son of Munna Jaiwar (38), a driver, and Seema (32), a housewife.
On Saturday last, a 12-year boy Bablu Paswan was killed after he fell accidentally in a deep pit at a construction site of the coastal road project in Worli. The pit was flooded with rain water during the heavy downpour witnessed during the weekend.
The boy, identified as one Divyashu Dhansi, was swept away in the swollen waters after he fell accidentally into a side gutter at Ambedkar chowk at Goregaon in north Mumbai at 10.24 pm on Wednesday last, while he was playing outside his house. With the Brihan Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials having called off the search operations on Friday last, Divyanshu is feared dead.
The gravity of the situation arising out of open drains and manholes during the monsoon months can be gauged from the fact that the BMC in a an RTI reply to activist Shakeel Ahmed Sheikh revealed that as many as 328 Mumbaikars comprising men, women and children, were killed after drowned in swollen drains, open manholes or in the Arabian Sea during the five years.
The issue of manholes and open drains came into sharp focus after August 2017, after the body of noted gastroenterologist Dr Deepak Amrapurkar was found on Thursday morning near a storm water drain at Worli in south-central Mumbai. Dr Amrapurkar’s body was found he went missing in heavy rain-triggered deluge in the metropolis.
On August 29, 2017 when the metropolis registered a record 325 mm rainfall which led to massive inundation, 59-year-old Dr Amrapukar -- who used to work with Bombay Hospital and Research Centre in south Mumbai – had gone missing while he was returning to his Prabhavidevi residence from the hospital in the evening.
Seeing the heavily flooded road, Dr Amrapukar had abandoned his vehicle some near Elphinstone Road, asked his driver to go home and began walking towards his home. His family sources had said that he had called his wife at around at 6.50 pm on Tuesday, some 10 to 15 minutes he went missing.
Dr Amrapukar, who wading through a waist-deep water that had inundated the Tulsi Pipe Road, was seen drifting towards an open manhole. Quoting eyewitnesses, Dr Gautam Bhansali, a senior doctor and close friend of Dr Amarapurkar, said: “Dr Amarapurkarfell into an open manhole on a flooded road”. Subsequently, his umbrella was found in the vicinity of the open manhole.
Following Dr Amrapukar’s disappearance, his family members lodged a complaint with the police. Rescue teams from the Mumbai fire brigade, Mumbai Police and disaster management personnel from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) found his body near storm water drain at around 6.30 am on August 31.
Pained by the tragic death of noted gastroenterologist Dr Deepak Amrapurkar who fell into an open manhole during deluge in south-central Mumbai on August 27 2017, the Bombay High Court had five days later directed the Maharashtra Government and the BMC to file their say on the lack of proper upkeep of manholes and potholes in the metropolis.
However, the high court’s upbraiding of the state government and lethargic BMC has not had desired effect on the Devendra Fadnavis dispensation and civic body-- especially the latter has not taken proper measures to cover the open drains and manholes across the metropolis.