BMC contractor held for Kurla open trench triple deaths

The Kurla police on Thursday arrested a civil contractor of the BMC allegedly in connection with the death by drowning of three brothers, including twins, in one of the three trenches that was dug up at Kapadia Nagar by the contractor to store water to carry out the work of building safety walls on the banks of the Mithi river in Kurla on May 1.

“Sunil Upadhyay, 40, was booked for not following safety measures at the site where the trenches were dug and the absence of barricades,” said a police officer of Kurla police station and added that Upadhyay was remanded in police custody for one day by the Kurla Metropolitan Magistrate’s court on Thursday. He will be produced before the court on Friday.

At around 1pm on Tuesday, some residents of a slum colony in Kalina in Santa Cruz (East) were playing cricket in the ground near the unsecured trenches, including the three brothers — Abdul Rehman Choudhari, 8, Abdul Karim, 8 and their elder brother Abdul Aziz, 12. When one of the brothers stepped into the trench to retrieve a cricket ball and drowned, the other two went in to save him but also drowned.

On learning about the incident, the police and fire brigade rushed to the spot. Fire fighting personnel fished out the bodies and sent them to Bhabha Hospital in Kurla (West) for post-mortem.