The city of resilience has had it. It’s now time for payback — for being taken for a ride and for letting people bear the brunt of the seeming lack of civic accountability.

The police set the wheels for this in motion on Monday by booking the contractor and the developer responsible for road maintenance for the death of a 28-year-old civil engineer, Umesh Shinde, on a flyover along the western express highway in Malad earlier this month, who was thrown off his bike after it hit a six-inch-deep pothole.

A police officer says Ameya Developers and contractor J Kumar were given a three-year contract for maintenance of this stretch of the road by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), which is valid till September 15. An internal MSRDC inquiry following the accident found that the flyover is poorly maintained.

Vishal, Shinde’s brother-in-law, wants authorities to push the envelope. “The move must lead to constructive solutions and arrests to strike fear in the hearts of errant officials.”

Things came to a head on Tuesday, when fresh rain pounded the city and potholes cropped up, throwing life out of gear.

This perhaps prompted Sandeep Deshpande, MNS corporator from Dadar, to take matters into his hands. “He came with a group of 20-25 men and blocked the roads department office of the civic body’s G-north ward,” claimed an official.

But Deshpande didn’t stop at that. He held the engineers hostage and questioned when potholes on Ranade Road, the area opposite Sena Bhavan, JK Sawant Marg and Lady Jamshedji Road would be filled. The corporator finally let them go when the deputy chief engineer gave it in writing that potholes will be fixed in 48 hours after the rain stops.

More of the sameTough luck if you thought that the status quo on monsoon preparedness had changed. It was the same old story as several areas were left waterlogged: trains and commuters were stranded, sewage water spilled onto roads and the city’s administrators passed the buck.

Trying to save face, civic officials blamed the India meteorological department for not issuing a heavy rainfall alert in the morning. Weather officials, though, claimed that the alert was sent out on Monday night.

Civic chief Sitaram Kunte hid behind the “unusually high tide” excuse. “If a tide of above 4.5m and rainfall above 65mm is reported in a day, it is likely to lead to waterlogging.”

The incessant heavy rain coincided with a high tide of 4.95m.