Labourer wakes up to urinate, falls to death from open lift shaft at under-construction Mumbai building

The Matunga police identified the deceased as Sanjay Minj, 37, who was visiting his maternal nephew, Prakash Bakla, a fitter working at the site.

A 37-year-old labourer died after suffering multiple brain and chest fractures in a fall from an open lift shaft on the sixth floor of an under-construction residential building in Matunga in the early hours of Thursday. According to the police, the victim had come to the site to meet a relative and was sleeping on the sixth floor. The incident occurred when he woke up to urinate and accidentally fell through the unguarded shaft.

The incident took place at the Trimukh Shantikunj under-construction site on Balkrishna Sule Marg, Wadala. (Representational/Gemini-generated image)

The incident took place at the Trimukh Shantikunj under-construction site on Balkrishna Sule Marg, Wadala. The building is being developed by Tridhaatu Renovators Private Limited, which has awarded the construction contract to M/s Task Infra Projects LLP. KV Nair has been given the contract to supply labour for the project.

The Matunga police identified the deceased as Sanjay Minj, 37, who was visiting his maternal nephew, Prakash Bakla, a fitter working at the site.

According to a police officer, Bakla, who hails from Chhattisgarh, has been working at the site for the past two years. Construction work began on December 24, and the site supervisor is Buddhadev Santra.

On September 9, Minj had dinner and went to sleep on the sixth floor. At around 1am on Thursday, the occupants were alerted by a person on the ground floor that someone had fallen. “When they checked, they found that the complainant’s maternal uncle, Minj, had fallen from the sixth floor through the elevator shaft and landed on the ground floor,” the officer said.

The labourers called an ambulance and rushed Minj to Sion Hospital, where he was admitted to the trauma emergency department. However, doctors subsequently declared him dead.