Mumbai News: MMRDA Blames Contractor Negligence For Fatal Metro Line 4 Slab Collapse Incident

Mumbai: The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has attributed the fatal collapse of a Metro Line 4 slab segment in Mulund on February 14 to negligence by the contractor, a joint venture between Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infrastructure Limited and Italian company, Astaldi.

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The incident, in which a precast parapet segment fell from an under-construction viaduct onto vehicles below, killed one person and injured three others. The probe report was prepared by MMRDA’s Special Intensive Safety Inspection Team following a public interest litigation seeking a structural safety audit of all ongoing Metro projects.

According to the Incident Report, the “root cause” of the accident was that a welder engaged by the Reliance Infrastructure-Astaldi Joint Venture (RAJV) “inadvertently cut temporary supports of a recently erected parapet segment where stitch concreting was not done.” The authority clarified that there was “no structural design deficiency, no material failure and no workmanship defect” in the segment itself.

The 6 ft by 4 ft parapet, weighing around 1.8 tonnes, had been erected on the night of February 13 near Mulund Fire Station. However, the next day, its temporary fasteners were cut before the segment was properly secured with stitch concreting, causing it to fall onto traffic on LBS Road.

The report squarely blamed RAJV for multiple lapses, including procedural non-compliance, unsafe behaviour and lack of supervision. It noted that there was no written authorisation before removing supports, no joint inspection or engineering verification, and no checklist or dismantling sequence followed. “No tagging or marking system existed to distinguish structurally completed segments from incomplete ones, which directly contributed to inadvertent removal of supports,” the report stated.

It also found fault with site supervision, stating that the welder “may not have been able to identify or distinguish between stitched or unstitched parapet segments,” and that there was a lack of proper instructions from supervisors.

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The MMRDA has imposed a penalty of Rs5 crore on RAJV for the lapses, noting that no representative of the firm was present on site at the time of the accident. The General Consultant — a consortium of DB, Hill International and Louis Berger — was fined Rs1 crore, and its services were terminated on February 18.

The report recommended replacing the entire team responsible for the project and implementing corrective and preventive measures to avoid recurrence. It concluded that the incident was caused by “removal of temporary supports” and not due to any flaw in design or materials.

The family of the deceased, Ramdhani Yadav, has been paid Rs39.5 lakh in compensation, while the injured have received medical cost reimbursements totalling Rs27.59 lakh. Construction activity on Metro Line 4 has since been curtailed, with only safety-related work currently underway.

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