FIR registered against housing society’s chairman, secretary after retired IG’s son, grandson had a ‘narrow escape’ in a faulty elevator

Shinde lives with his family in Challengers Tower-01 in Thakur Village, Kandivali (East).

As per the FIR, on Sunday afternoon, 67-year-old Shinde’s son Ajinkya, 37, and grandson Aryavrat, 3, were going out. They took a small passenger lift to go down.

After a while, Shinde noticed that someone was screaming. When he checked, he was shocked to find that Ajinkya and Aryavrat were stuck in the lift between P2 level and the first floor and were shouting for help.

“When I asked security guard Mahendra Kanta Jaiswal for help, he told me that he doesn’t have any knowledge about elevators and that it was a Sunday and nobody would come (to rescue) and asked me to contact the society’s chairman and secretary,” Shinde said in his complaint.

When he contacted chairman Sudhir Khandelwal, he told him that he would contact Otis and Kone (lift) companies for help. The secretary, Shailendra Mandovra, did not answer the call.

Shinde stated in the FIR that when he contacted Otis’s company’s area manager, A D Fernandes, for help, told him not to speak to him directly and asked him to tell his society’s chairman and secretary to contact him.

Meanwhile, someone contacted a technician from Otis company working in a nearby tower, who then helped Shinde’s son and grandson come out of the stuck elevator. Both of them were under trauma and my grandson felt suffocated and even vomited in the lift, Shinde said.

“My society’s elevators are old and faulty and have been experiencing problems for the past two months. The society’s chairman, secretary, security guard, and Otis company’s executive neglected this issue, and their ‘criminal negligence’ put my family member’s life at risk. Hence I filed a complaint,” Shinde stated in the FIR.
The police have booked the four under sections 287, 336, 337, and 34 of the Indian Penal Code and are further investigating the matter.