Mumbai: The possibility of a major accident involving a dilapidated building falling on the tracks of the Central Railway was averted after the structure near the Sandhurst Road Station was pulled down by authorities on Monday.
It took the cancellation of 106 train services on one of the busiest railway routes in the suburban network to demolish the three-storey building, Thorat House, whose 21 residents were first evicted. “We had to hold a traffic block to conduct the demolition carried out by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) with the coordination of Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHADA) that owned the building,” Central Railways PR officer A.K. Singh, told Gulf News.
“The debris has been completely cleared.”
“The building was completely demolished and by 3.20am Monday, traffic was restored,” he said.
The decision to pull the building down came about after the retaining wall along platform No 1 of Sandhurst Station fell on the tracks this monsoon. In the previous years, in 2012 and 2013, broken pieces from the decaying structure had also fallen on the tracks, said Singh.
But this time there was no other option for the building declared dangerous by the BMC several years ago but to bring it down since the retaining wall around it had collapsed on to track number one of Sandhurst Road on two consecutive days last week.
This forced trains to run slowly on this stretch at 20 km/h, thus affecting the services by over 15-20 minutes.
The railways warned the BMC that it would stop services between Mumbai CST and Byculla completely if the building was not pulled down at the earliest.
Surprisingly, a Right To Information (RTI) activist, Sulaiman Bhimani, had for over a year, noticed the crack in the retaining wall and had alerted authorities of the impending danger. He asked them to get it repaired but his advice was ignored. The activist, who travels on this route, had written to the Railways, BMC and local police station warning the crack could turn dangerous and pose a risk for daily commuters.
However, this is not the only building that stands precariously along the tracks. It is not clear whether railway authorities have made a note of other structures that could pose a risk to rail commuters and passing trains.
Some years ago, the railways did build a 300-metre concrete retaining wall on this section but that has been described as a band aid for a large wound.
