Death toll in Ghatkopar hoarding crash rises to 17; 10 injured victims still in hospitals

Ten days since the accident, 10 victims are still receiving treatment at civic-run hospitals—eight of them at Rajawadi Hospital and two at KEM Hospital. Seventy other victims who were rescued from the debris of the hoarding collapse have been discharged from different hospitals.

While 14 bodies had been recovered within 24 hours of the May 13 crash, the bodies of two others—Manoj Chansoria and Anita Chansoria—were plucked out nearly three days later.

Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior Mumbai Fire Brigade official said the Chansorias’s car had been the hardest to recover because it was trapped under one of the five huge girders that the 120-ft hoarding rested atop.

“The car where the body had been recovered was situated in the middle of the accident site. The car was badly crushed, almost flattened, under the pressure of one of the five girders, beneath which the vehicle got buried. The metal girder is huge and heavy and we were facing immense difficulties in cutting the structure. We used the gas cutters to cut the girder and pressed three fire hose lines to ensure supply of water to prevent a spark, and thereby a fire,” an officer said.

When the girder was finally cut, the rescuing agencies pulled the car from beneath using a bulldozer. “The car was in an extremely bad state. First, we cut the doors of the car and later cut open the roof, through which we extracted the bodies of the victims,” said the officer, adding that the bodies were “almost decomposed”.

The BMC called off the search operation on the morning of May 16, while the final “make up” call—withdrawal of all the vehicles of first responders including vans of the fire brigade—was sounded on May 18.