mumbai

Updated: Nov 02, 2016 13:53 IST

Diwali witnessed a mad rush in Mumbai local trains and the overcrowding, caused because of the delay in train arrivals and jaywalking across railway tracks led to 90 accidents on the local suburban section between Saturday and Tuesday. Thirty-nine people have died and 51 others have been left grievously injured.

The railway police said that the accidents took place because the trains, mostly general coaches, were chock block because of the festive rush.

Most of these deaths were results of accidents at Kurla, Vashi, Mumbai Central, Dombivli, Andheri and Churchgate stations, among others. On Sunday, the Government Railway Police (GRP) registered 21 railway accidents, among which 13 were fatal. Three of them died at Kurla, two in the jurisdiction of Churchgate and Mumbai Central police stations and one each in Bandra, Andheri, Vasai, Borivli and Panvel.

Speaking on railway accidents, a GRP official said that there were several factors apart from the known facts of falling from running trains or getting hit by one while crossing tracks. He recounted an accident on Thursday night when a man had a squabble with some hawkers at Thane station and he was then allegedly chased, which later caused him to come under a running train, leading to his death.

The preliminary probe in the incident revealed that the man had allegedly stolen a toy that one of the hawkers was selling and hence they began chasing him. The victim jumped on the tracks from platform number 2 in a bid to escape but was hit by a slow train entering the station at the same time.

The railway police have conducted several awareness campaigns to discourage commuters from taking to the tracks, however, such incidents keep happening.

“There is always a heavy rush on the foot overbridges whenever a train comes and people spend around 10-15 minutes to navigate from the platform towards the exit. It’s worse at stations like Parel, Dadar, Thane, Andheri etc and even deploying cops don’t help much. There has to be alternate mode of transport to accommodate the crowd or else there will be no end to the problem,” said a GRP officer.

The Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation and railway police conducted a survey of all the suburban lines and found out there were over 100 chronic accident spots. These spots were identified for infrastructural improvements, either in the form of a foot overbridge or blocking the shortcuts by have a sturdy fencing wall, which cannot be broken.