Mumbai: Police personnel, passengers and others at Bandra railway station after a stampede, in Mumbai, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
Mumbai: At least nine persons were injured in a stampede amid rush for boarding at the Bandra Terminus in Mumbai on Sunday morning.
Among those injured, the condition of two persons have been described as critical.
The stampede took place at Platform No. 1 of Bandra Terminus in Bandra East.
Top officials of Western Railway and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation have rushed to the spot.
According to the Disaster Control Room of the BMC, the incident took place in the wee hours of Sunday.
The incident happened due to rush to board Train No. 22921 Bandra-Gorakhpur Express. The railway stations are experiencing heavy rush because of Diwali festivities.
Those injured have been identified as Shabhir Abdul Rehman (40), Parmeshwar Sukhdar Gupta (28), Ravindra Harihar Chuma (30), Ramsevak Ravindra Prasad Prajapati (29), Sanjay Tilakram Kangay (27), Divyanshu Yogendra Yadav (18), Mohammad Shareef Shaikh (25), Indrajith Sahani (19) and Noor Mohammad Shaikh (18).
The Western Railway urged the passengers not to board or alight a moving train, as it is dangerous.
The WR is operating more than 130 festival special trains for various destinations, especially to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, in view of the upcoming Diwali and Chhath festivals, it said in the statement.
In another video statement, WR's chief public relations officer Vineet Abhishek said about 2.5 hours before the scheduled departure at 5.10 am, the train was being backed on the platform.
"Unfortunately, some passengers tried to board the train while it was moving, because of which they got injured," he said.
The WR official said considering the festival season, they have issued a notification for 2,300 trips of special trains from Mumbai Central, Bandra, Valsad, Udhna and other stations on their network.
He also said they have created a special holding area and set up extra ticketing counters for the passengers.
An adequate number of Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel along with ticketing staff remains deployed on the stations, to ensure smoother boarding of passengers at the railway stations. Also, they are allowed to board the trains in queue as per the protocol, the WR said.
Meanwhile, some purported videos of the incident went viral on social media and one clip showed a person with a leg injury lying on a platform and other passengers boarding the train without paying attention to him.
In one video, an RPF officer was seen carrying an injured passenger on his shoulder, while another clip showed an RPF officer along with some passengers carrying an injured person using a cloth as (makeshift) stretcher.
(With PTI inputs)