Police suspect fumes from a nearby electroplating unit seeped into a toilet block near Ram Mandir after a Ganpati immersion gathering, killing two young men within hours.
Two young men are dead, and Mumbai police have one person in custody, after what investigators believe was a chemical leak that turned a roadside public toilet into a death trap.
The men, Prabhakar Dhanivar, 24, and Bhavin Desai, 18, had stepped out to use the toilet opposite the Parsi Panchayat Gate near Mrunaltai Bridge in Ram Mandir, East Mumbai, in the early hours after a Ganpati immersion outing with friends. They never came back out.
Senior Police Inspector Abdul Shaikh of Vanrai Police Station told ANI that the group of eight to ten friends had eaten dinner and were sitting near the site around 2:30 am when the two stepped away. When they didn't return, the others went looking. What they found was grim.
Rohit Vairagi, a friend who was part of the group, described the half hour of confusion before anyone realised something was badly wrong. "After half an hour, when they didn't return, we called them 15 to 20 times, but they didn't answer our calls. So we went to check," he said. One door was open, with a friend lying unconscious inside, and they pulled him out. The other was locked from within. They broke it down and dragged the second man out too. Both were rushed to a trauma care hospital nearby. Doctors declared them dead on arrival.
Vairagi also said he had skin rashes afterward, which he linked to how strong the fumes were at the spot.
What police say happened next is where this stops being just a freak accident and starts looking like a civic failure. Officers detected an odour at the scene during their inquiry and traced it to a small electroplating unit operating close by. DCP Gajanan Rajmane, who heads Zone 12, named the business as Sai Electroplate, owned by one Navinchandra Chawda, and said chemicals from the shop are suspected to have leaked into the drainage line, sending fumes up through the toilet.
A post-mortem has been conducted, according to Inspector Shaikh, and one individual has been detained in connection with the case. Police haven't named who, or confirmed whether it's the shop owner, an employee, or someone else tied to the premises. That detail should firm up as the investigation moves forward.
The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board has already sent a team to the site. An officer from its Sion office, Madhurima Joshi, inspected the location, and the board has installed a pollution monitoring device there to track air quality round the clock for the next day.
What remains unclear is how long the electroplating unit had been discharging chemicals into a drain running under a public toilet used by hundreds every day, and whether anyone had flagged the smell before this week. Those answers will likely come from the MPCB's readings and whatever the detained individual tells investigators in the days ahead.
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.