Mumbai: Nearly 48 hours after they came under the Bandra-Jaipur Express and died, buffaloes’ rotting carcasses have still not been removed, raising an unbearable stink around Virar station. Usually, railway authorities load the corpses and transport them to the local municipal area where they are disposed of.
Commuters travelling to Virar were at the receiving end when the stench hit them almost as soon as they got down at the platform. Aakanksha Bajpai (25) who travels from Mahim to Virar said, “As soon as I got down at the platform, I was hit by this stink. At first, I thought it was a dead rat on the platform but then I saw a crowd near the foot-over-bridge and then the decaying bodies of the buffaloes.”
At about 1 pm on Tuesday this week, around seven buffaloes and cows came under the long-distance Bandra-Jaipur Express however the smell from their carcasses took a turn for the worse by Thursday morning. An official said, “It was just a delay, there was a communication gap and removal of the carcasses got delayed.”
Speaking about the situation, Western Railway chief public relations officer Ravindra Bhakar said, “The carcasses have been transported now and the tracks cleared.”
The day the cattle was run over by the train, services towards Churchgate were disrupted by 15 to 20 minutes in the afternoon and in a separate incident the same day, derailment of three wagons at Saphale sent trains between Dahanu and Virar into a tizzy till 8 am the next day (Wednesday).
