Santosh Singh with his mother.

MUMBAI: A phone call at 7pm on Sunday brought the shattering news to the Singhs of Kalyan that two of their family members have been in a bad accident and that they were being rushed to the GT Hospital . On reaching the state-run hospital at Crawford Market , Reenu Singh found her father Rajendra (60) battling for life in the ICU and his younger brother Santosh (28) injured with multiple fractures.

The branch of a towering peepul tree had collapsed above the sandwich stall that Rajendra and Santosh ran for the past 7-8 years at Fashion Street near the Bombay Hospital lane. Reenu desperately hoped that her father would fight the injuries, and not meet the fate of 75-yearold Tamil Nadu resident P V Bastian, who died on the spot of the tree collapse. But Rajendra succumbed to head and multiple injuries at around 11pm.

Little did they know that this was not the last of heartbreaking news for them.

On Monday afternoon, doctors informed the family that the impact of the crash has made Santosh quadriplegic, and he is unlikely to walk again. It has left the already distressed family numb and clueless.

“My father’s body is lying in the mortuary. We can’t carry out his final rites without his only son knowing about it. We are waiting for my brother’s condition to stabilize,” Reenu said.

Chief spine surgeon at GT Hospital Dr Dhiraj Sonawane told TOI that Santosh has suffered three fractures in the spinal column.

“He has no sensation or movement in any of his four limbs. He can feel nothing from his neck down as of now. We may attempt a surgery to decompress the cord and stabilize the spine. Unfortunately, most of such injuries are irreversible,” the doctor said.

Santosh, who has been fleeting in and out of consciousness, has been told that their father is in the ICU. Their mother, Rajkumari (56), too, has been kept in the dark about her son’s condition and husband’s demise.

“We are afraid that she may not be able to bear the news,” said their family friend Alok Shukla.

The family rued that nearly 24 hours after the incident, no BMC official had bothered to meet them.

“My brother said that they had made six to seven pleas to the BMC to prune the tree branch. We are not sure whether they were in writing, but they did make repeated requests,” the sister added.

The BMC’s garden department on Monday gave a report saying that the branch had decayed. With her father’s death and brother’s disability, the family is also staring at a grave financial crisis. The daily earnings from the stall, which they were running on rent, would range between Rs2,000 and Rs6,000.

Santosh had borrowed a sum of Rs5 lakh just last month to pay for his younger sister’s wedding.

“He was also paying our home’s monthly EMI of Rs30,000. Our lives have been turned upside down,” said the sister, adding that they would pursue the case with the BMC.

