Justice finally served: Kin of Kinara fire victims on payout

Time of India

a day ago

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Mumbai: A day after Bombay high court ordered the BMC to pay Rs 50 lakh compensation each to the families of eight victims killed in the 2015 fire at Kurla's Hotel City Kinara, many of them said the ruling was a case of justice delayed but not denied.
Seven of the victims were students—five of engineering and two mass media— while the eighth worked as a design engineer. For their families, the court's decision came after a decade of unimaginable grief.
Sion Pratiksha Nagar resident Rekha Thapar, mother of Akash Thapar, 19, an engineering student of Don Bosco Institute of Technology (DBIT), was the petitioner in the case. "I didn't miss a single hearing. Justice has been finally served—late, but it has been served," she said.
Thapar recalled how Akash, a bright student, wasn't even meant to attend college that day. "He said he'd go out for a while and return soon. I didn't even pack his tiffin, something I always did. Later, I saw the news of the fire on TV and told my husband how tragic it was—not knowing it was my own son," she said. Her husband was bedridden for years, and she ran the household by taking tuitions. "Akash would always say, 'Once I start working, you can stop giving classes'.
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Rekha received the call asking her to come to Rajawadi Hospital—where BMC usually takes bodies for postmortem—and knew instantly something terrible had happened. "I'm grateful to our legal team for not giving up," she added, recounting how she, her daughter and sister rushed to the hospital on the day.
Akash's close friend Taha Shaikh, 20, was among those who died. His father Mushtaque Shaikh said, "No compensation can bring back my son.
He died because of corruption that allowed illegal eateries like this one to operate. Even 10 years later, little has changed. That day haunts me."
Another victim, Sharjeel Jalil Shaikh, had just begun to show promise, said his mother, Rehana Shaikh, a schoolteacher from Jogeshwari. Her husband died in 2018 after a heart attack. "We returned to Jogeshwari—our dreams in ashes."
Mass media student Bernadette Dsouza had already seen her family hit by tragedy.
"I lost my husband in 2013. In 2015, I lost my daughter to negligence," said her mother Jacinata from Sion's Everard Nagar. "My son Victor still doesn't talk about the disaster. He was very close to his sister and despite my attempts to get him to speak about it, he has not been able to bring it out. My daughter always said she would do better than me in life.
She played basketball and was good at studies too, taking very little time to prepare for her examinations. She never got the chance. We owe our fight for justice to advocate Godfrey Pimenta." Pimenta, meanwhile, called it a landmark judgment by the court. Erwin Dsouza, the other mass media student, left home early that day for an exam. His mother Jacqueline said she tried his phone, but it was switched off. "We live in Orlem in Malad and my son would travel a long distance daily, changing trains to reach his college. By the time we heard and reached Rajawadi Hospital, it was night. I just hope the BMC doesn't drag us to the Supreme Court now. Let it end here."