Mumbai: A major accident was averted when a height barrier of foot over-bridge (FOB) near King’s Circle railway bridge was dislocated when a speeding car hit it early on Friday morning. The incident occurred at 6 am, coinciding with the timings of harbour line local trains which pass through the same bridge built above the road. The accident led to standstill traffic on both the roads leading to the Sion flyover, which was already shut for repairs.
Shivaji Sutar, the Central Railway chief public relation officer, said, “A car has dashed the barrier due to which it got dislocated but there was no impact on suburban services due to this incident.” “The police department has seized the truck and investigation is underway. However no one was injured and none of the harbour line services was disrupted,” he said.
The restoration of height gauge at the spot was undertaken later on Friday afternoon. A police officer said, “Around 5.45am on Friday, a truck MH-19 GU-1021 came speeding and dashed the height gauge installed at the railway bridge in front of Matunga police station on Dr BA Road, near King’s Circle railway station. Matunga Police then booked the truck driver, Kuldeep Vishal Singh, under relevant IPC sections for rash driving and act endangering life or personal safety of others.”
The locals took to social media to express their ire and shared a photo, showing a huge iron block lying on the street. The traffic police and local police were alerted. Traffic police roped in a crane, to move the iron barrier blocking the traffic and vehicular movement was normalised after an hour.
The traffic during the peak hours was badly hit due to the accident and led to a bottleneck traffic on the roads leading to Sion flyover, which has been shut for vehicular movement from Thursday evening to Monday morning. Traffic snarls were reported between Sion and Dadar, which took motorists over 70 minutes to cross over. The snarls continued till Friday afternoon, said police.
An irate motorist said, “We already have to face snarls along the Sion flyover, in addition, the accident compounded our troubles. What are the police doing in this matter?” Meanwhile, a pedestrian, Indranath Chowdhury tweeted, “Contract staff poorly managing the traffic. Because of a personnel deployed at Sion-Chunabhatti signal, it was difficult to cross the road and when requested, he responded rudely, asking us to go to the nearby chowki and complain.”
