23 lives snuffed out in 7 minutes

Mumbai: The final moments before the Elphinstone Road station stampede that killed 23 people has finally come to light. According to railway sources, it took only seven minutes for the one of the biggest tragedies of recent times in the city to unravel. Sources within the railways have said CCTV footage of the incident has revealed that the chaos, shrieks, panic and finally the eerie silence that enveloped the station occurred between 10.17 am to 10.24 am on September 29.

The footage also shows that the commuter rush on the foot overbridge (FOB) increased from 10.09 am and shortly after, a man carrying a gunny bag of flowers was seen struggling to walk down the staircase that eventually saw the stampede. The man is seen losing balance and an internal probe by the railways has ascertained that it was him that uttered the line “Phool paddle”, which means, “the flowers fell,” which was understood by those on the FOB as “Pool,” which also means bridge in Hindi and Marathi.

The footage shows that the chaos then begins at 10.17 am, when commuters are initially seen panicking. Then the stampede begins, lasting seven minutes. An official said, “We have been able to retrieve the footage of the circulating area and observed the passengers in the footage minutely.” The official added, “As a reference, we went back 10 minutes before the number of passengers saw a spike, so around 9.55 am there was almost no one on the FOB but at around 10.09 am the rush begins to gather.”

A few minutes after the crowd begins to build up, a man with a gunny bag full of flowers is seen struggling down the stairs. Another official said, “We see the man dropping the gunny bag and losing his balance as he tries to prevent the bag from toppling over. We feel that it was this man that shouted out that the flowers had fallen, in Marathi. Eyewitnesses too have corroborated this theory. This occurred a few seconds before 10.17 am and then the crowd just went berserk.”

The footage then goes on to capture the struggle on the FOB of an estimated crowd of more than 9,000 passengers, before the mass of people finally come to a standstill at 10.24 am with almost no movement seen on the staircase.