Kurla accident: Kin of BEST crash victims blame BMC, other local authorities
Families of victims from the Kurla bus crash express grief and anger at BMC for poor pedestrian infrastructure, blaming it for the tragedy
Mumbai: Three days after the BEST bus crash in Kurla, which claimed seven lives and injured 42, families of the deceased are struggling to come to terms with their loss. In addition to grief, they are processing strong anger directed at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). They say poor footpaths, the ever-increasing number of hawkers, parking on both sides of the street, and share rickshaws crowding the road have placed the lives of pedestrians in peril.

“Add to the long list of threats to pedestrians, two-wheelers, auto-rickshaws and buses that keep coming at you when you walk here,” said Abdul Salim Shah, father of Afreen Shah, the 19-year-old who died in the crash while returning from her first day at a new job. “If there was a footpath or a skywalk for pedestrians, fewer people would have died. My daughter would still be alive.”
Afreen had been walking home when she was hit but the runaway bus on Monday night. “The share rickshaws accept only long-distance fares. She would have been alive if she could have taken one of them. The RTO and police are completely ineffective against them,” said her father. Pointing to the unchecked hawkers not far from the civic ‘L’ ward office, he added, “The BMC allows this as they collect hafta from them. Who will answer for this?”
Asghar Ali, uncle of deceased 20-year-old Anam Sheikh, had the same concerns. “She had just paid up for a course she wanted to start. But now she’s gone, all her dreams are unfulfilled. Anam was on a bike with her father, running errands. He is still in Habib Hospital and is yet to be told of her death.”
Like most roads near railway stations in Mumbai, the one in Kurla too is a chaotic mess. Vedant Mhatre, programme manager at The Walking Project, an advocacy group with a pedestrian-first agenda, said, “The area experiences a very heavy baseline pedestrian load with hundreds of storefronts contributing to the demand for parking. Also, hundreds of buses navigate S G Barve Marg amidst a chaotic mix of pedestrians, rickshaws, haphazardly parked two-wheelers and cars parked along the roadside. The footpaths are far too narrow to be of any use,” he said, advocating a skywalk as a solution.
Rickshaw driver, Mohammad Akhtar Khan, who was injured in Monday’s accident, said pedestrians and vehicles are constantly competing for space on the road. Khan was about to take a left turn from the vegetable market towards the main road when the runaway bus hit a bike, which hit an auto-rickshaw, that fell on his auto-rickshaw. “Had there been more space, I could have escaped,” he said.
Abdul Salim Shah says he plans to approach the families of all the deceased and file a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court in due course, pinning blame on the BMC and other local authorities.
With inputs from Revu Suresh

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