Mumbai:
Five persons were killed and 36 persons injured after a major portion of a foot overbridge near a train station in south Mumbai collapsed on Thursday evening.
The bridge, officially named as ‘Himalaya bridge’, connected the bustling Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus railway station with the Azad Maidan Police Station.
The bridge which connected the area near the Times of India building with the iconic CSMT station was commonly knwon as 'Kasab bridge' after the 26/11 Mumbai attack terrorist passed through it during the terror attacks.
According to reports, 26/11 terror attack convict Ajmal Kasab had fired on Times of India building standing on the same bridge, and had killed several people.
Also, it was while the terrorists were using the foot overbridge to reach the adjoining Cama Hospital that Mumbai photojournalist Sebastian D'Souza photographed Ajmal Kasab, which later helped in his conviction.
While nine of the ten terrorists were neutralised in the counter-terror operation that lasted for almost 72 hours, Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive, was later hanged in Yerawada Jail.
The incident occurred around 7:30 pm, a time when officegoers use it to commute to the station in the southern part of Mumbai. The injured have been rushed to St. George hospital and GT Hospital.
An eywitness said when the bridge collapsed, there was a red light at the nearby signal, and that is why the death toll was not more.
Thursday’s incident is a grim reminder of the September 2017 incident when a foot over-bridge linking Elphinstone Road and Parel suburban railway stations had collapsed, leading to a stampede in which 22 people were killed and several injured.
