Elphinstone stampede: ‘Never want to return to city of accidents’

Also read | A year on, Mumbai Police to classify Elphinstone Road stampede as accident

“Chandan died in the stampede on the station’s foot overbridge. What I am to tell that poor child? He is surely not going to understand,” Ganesh said at his house in Satna.

Chandan, a finance manager at a private firm in Parel was on way to office on September 29, 2017, when he got caught up in a stampede on the foot overbridge at Elphinstone Road station (now named Prabhadevi). Along with him, 22 others died, and 38 sustained injuries in the stampede.

Following the incident, Railways declared foot overbridges in the suburban section as a “necessity” and instructed that all stations seeing a footfall of one lakh and above must have three foot overbridges.

For the families of the victims, however, no infrastructural upgrades can bring back what they had lost. While most have learnt to live with the grief, Ganesh said his family now dreads Mumbai. Based out of Satna in Madhya Pradesh, Chandan, an MBA, had worked in Mumbai for 14 years. He was also pursuing a course in chartered secretary.

“Mumbai narak hai, ye ghatnao ka sheher hai (The city is hell… it is a city of accidents). I lost my son to the city. Chandan used to believe that he would earn more in Mumbai. He was offered a job back home but turned it down,” said Ganesh, who now does odd jobs to run the family.

“What are we going to do with that money? His efforts are no good to his wife or son who miss him every day. We often requested him to leave Mumbai but he never listened to us.”

The Railways had offered Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the 23 victims. In March 2018, the Railway Claims Tribunal in Mumbai granted compensation of Rs 8 lakh each to the relatives of 17 deceased while 19 injured were compensated as per the disability they had sustained.

Ganesh is yet to receive compensation, as he had failed to inform the bank about the account number where the money should be deposited.

About 300 km from Satna, Sarita Bahadur (48), a resident of Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, is trying to ensure that her 24-year-old son, Prabhat, does not work in any metropolitan city. Sarita had lost her husband Vijay in the stampede.

“I have a bachelor’s degree in technology and I am looking for jobs… Till my father was alive, he supported us emotionally and financially. Now, I have to take care of my mother and the house. I want a high-paying job which I would get only if I move to a city like Mumbai but my mother does not allow me. She fears I will take a train to reach Mumbai… it scares her,” said Prabhat from Jaunpur.

Sarita, who has three married daughters, had come to meet Vijay in Mumbai a week before he died. She recalled climbing the same bridge with Vijay at Parel station a couple of days before the incident. “I don’t feel like doing anything. The incident has shaken me to the core,” she said.

The family has received a compensation of Rs 5 lakh.

Unlike Sarita, Poonam Chavan in Mumbra has used her Rs 5-lakh compensation to look after her one-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. “I don’t have a job and stay with my in-laws in Mumbra. I will try finding a job later but neither my son nor I are keeping well. My husband, who was a custom officer, would take care of us. But now he is gone. We plan to return to Satara, our native place, after some years,” she said.