Mumbai bridge collapse

Mumbai Municipal Corporation has ordered an inquiry into Thursday's foot overbridge collapse after Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said he asked BMC chief Ajoy Mehta to fix "primary responsibility". "It is shocking that such an accident can take place even after a structural audit. Primary responsibility will be fixed by this evening. I have asked civic chief to find out names of those responsible," Fadnavis said while speaking to reporters after meeting the injured in St George's Hospital nearby.

Audit report of the Mumbai bridge collapse, accessed by CNN-News18, has revealed that the bridge was certified to be in a "good condition" and only needed minor repairs. Two nurses on their way to work among the six people killed and 32 injured as a major portion of a foot overbridge near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) railway station in Mumbai collapsed on Thursday evening.

As Ranjana Tambe (40) and Apoorva Prabhu (35) were nurses at GT hospital and had been working since 2005, their colleagues said. Incidentally, several of the injured in the collapse were taken to GT hospital. Both the nurses, who were on their way for night shift, were from Dombivili. While Tambe was a nurse in ward 6, Prabhu was a nurse in the operation theatre and is survived by her husband and two children.

Bridge collapse, on the busy Dadabhai Naoroji Road, was the third in less than 18 months in the maximum city. On July 3, 2018, a pedestrian pathway of Gokhale Bridge over Andheri railway station in suburban Mumbai had collapsed, killing two and injuring five others. Nine months before, in 2017, 23 people were killed in a stampede when the Elphinstone Bridge had collapsed.

Collapse happened around 7.30 pm Thursday evening when a major portion of the bridge caved in, officials said. Some motorists who were passing beneath the bridge when it came down, were among those injured.

PM Narendra Modi said he was deeply anguished by the loss of lives due to the accident. “My thoughts are with the bereaved families. Wishing that the injured recover at the earliest. Maharashtra Government is providing all possible assistance to those affected,” he tweeted.

CM Devendra Fadnavis, announced a probe and said the guilty will be punished. He said that the bridge was audited last year and was found to be structurally sound. Also announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh for the kin of the dead and Rs 50,000 for the injured.