MUMBAI: A day after two men died after suspected exposure to toxic fumes inside a public toilet in Goregaon, the Vanrai police on Monday arrested the owner of the land on which the adjacent metal plating workshop operates.
who had leased the land to the plating unit, has been arrested, the workshop operator remains at large While Chawda. A police team has been sent to Uttar Pradesh to trace him. Desai and Dhivar then went to the nearby public toilet to freshen up. Police are awaiting the post-mortem and forensic findings to establish the exact cause of death and determine the role of the plating unit in the incident.
Police suspect that fumes from sulphuric acid used at the plating unit entered the public toilet through underground discharge chambers, leading to the deaths of Bhavin Desai, 18, and Prabhakar Dhivar, 25, on Sunday. The police have registered an FIR under Section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita against the workshop operator and landowner Vipul Chawda. The incident occurred around 2.30am when the group stopped for dinner. When they did not return after about 15 minutes, the others went to check on them. The two were rushed to Trauma Care Hospital in Jogeshwari, where doctors declared them brought dead at around 3.50am.
“So far, in the case, we have arrested Vipul Chawda, who had leased the land to the metal plating unit,” said Abdul Rauf Shaikh, senior police inspector of Vanrai police station.
