Mumbai wedding horror: Man dies chasing men who made ‘gestures’ at woman; 10 injured after falling into pit

MUMBAI: A wedding function in Bhandup West ended in a tragedy for one of the attendees who died after accidentally falling into a 30-foot septic tank pit in an under-construction SRA building in the vicinity, while chasing some men who allegedly made gestures at a woman at 11.30pm on Thursday. Ten others were injured in the incident.

Following this, about five of the attendees at the wedding in Matoshri Hall and three labourers at the site, who attempted to rescue the victim, Bhalchandra Falle (25), also fell into the pit, which was filled with up to 5 ft of water.

According to fire brigade officials, the pit was covered with metal and wooden planks. "These planks slipped, creating gaps when people stepped on them while trying to rescue the man who was the first to fall into the pit. Subsequently, labourers and locals managed to get about 9 of those who had fallen out of the pit by using a ladder and they were sent to hospitals. After our team reached, we rescued only one person from the pit, and sent him to a hospital," said a fire brigade official.

A fire brigade team led by assistant divisional fire officer D M Patil, and station officers Ashish Adhangale and M A Jadhav, rescued the 43-year-old man and moved him to the hospital. Subsequently, the fire brigade team deployed submersible pumps to drain the water in the pit, which was murky, as part of their search and rescue measures.

"The site is a complicated one in terms of the location and the space around it, and it did not have much leeway for a rescue operation. We continued our operations through the day on Friday and the BMC ward office too deployed a dewatering pump and we finally managed to drain the entire pit at around 3 pm on Friday," said a fire officer.

DCP (zone VII) Hemraj Rajput said a group, including the 21-year-old woman, attending the wedding was standing outside the hall. Around this time, three to four youngsters waved out to the group and there was some confusion over whether they were making gestures at the girl. This led to a fight. The group waiting outside the hall gave a chase to the youngsters who had waved out. In the melee, one of the youngsters rushed inside the under-construction building. One among the wedding party chasing the boy fell into the septic tank and died.

"When he fell inside, others including some construction workers there stood on a temporary platform to pull him out, but the platform gave way and they too fell in and sustained injuries," Rajput said.

He said based on a complaint made by a relative of the deceased, an FIR on charges of causing death due to negligence has been registered against Shraddha Developers which was carrying out the building construction. "Currently, the FIR has been taken based on the complaint. However, we will probe if there was any negligence and if the deceased should have gone inside the building in the first place," said a Bhandup police officer. Bhandup police have registered an offence under sections 106 (1), 125, 125 (a), 125 (b), and 290 of the BNS. Further investigation into the incident is currently underway.

While Falle (25) was declared dead on arrival at the hospital, two of the injured have been admitted to separate hospitals. They include Shreyas Surve (25) and Harishankar Karva (43), whose condition is said to be stable. The others who were discharged after treatment include Aniket Kadam (26), Jaideep Shah (21), Sanket Juwatkar, (25), Aditya Aaher (26), Aniket Patil (20), Ankit Rohit (19), Jaywant Farsane (31) and Raman Yadav (26).


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