Wall collapse in Mumbai stalls central services

Last Monday, the city’s lifeline got throttled on the Western Railway. And Sunday, it choked on the Central Railway.

Services came to a standstill on the Down (towards Thane) slow line, between Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Byculla, as a retaining wall collapsed at Sandhurst Road station around 5.50am (according to the railway authorities). Services on the other tracks also took a hit, with suburban trains running almost an hour late.

The mishap forced the Central Railway to cancel its routine mega block. Railway officials said that work of clearing the track would continue till late in the night.

Down trains plied only on the fast track which has no platforms adjacent to it at stations where only slow trains halt. So, commuters wanting to get down at stations between CST and Byculla had to go all the way up to Byculla, and make a return journey on a slow Up train. “It took me almost an hour from Kurla to Sandhurst Road. The train was moving very slowly,” Tapan Mehendi, a commuter, said.

Another passenger, KM Aga, said that he had gone Sandhurst Road station to take a train to Ghatkopar. He had to travel the other way to CST, which took over 20 minutes. “The train took an awful lot of time to reach Masjid station,” he said.

Local residents said that cracks appeared on the retaining wall around 10pm on Saturday. “Around 5am, we heard a loud noise. A portion of the wall fell on our building, forcing us to evacuate,” Sachin Mali, resident of building No 27/C, which alone was affected, said. The building, built by Mhada, stood right behind the wall. None of the 20 tenants of the building was injured.

Residents blamed the slack attitude of the authorities for the mishap. “We wrote a letter to the railways in November last year, saying that the wall badly needed repairs. Later, at a neighbouring plot, an old building was demolished for redevelopment. Drilling and piling work at the site resulted in the wall cracking,” Suresh Patil, another resident of 27/C, said.