Teen dies after being hit in head by descending elevator

While playing a game of hide and seek with her brothers and cousins, the victim, who was on the fifth floor, put her head through the open patch on the lift door which should have been covered with glass, but wasn’t.

Mumbai: The Mankhurd police on Monday registered a First Information Report against the secretary and chairman of a seven-storey building in Mankhurd after a 16-year-old girl sustained a severe injury and died when she stuck her head through the windowless part of the lift door last week.

The teenager was rushed to Shatabdi hospital in Govandi where she died during treatment. (HT PHOTO)

Reshma Kharavi, who lived with her parents in Sathe Nagar was visiting her grandmother in New Sai Dham Society, a seven-storeyed Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA)-construction in Lallubhai compound, Mankhurd (west), with her younger brothers, aged 10 and eight on October 28.

While playing a game of hide and seek with her brothers and cousins, Kharavi, who was on the fifth floor, put her head through the open patch on the lift door which should have been covered with glass, but wasn’t.

The lift descending from the seventh floor hit her on her head, said senior inspector Mahadevi Koli of the Mankhurd police station.

On hearing her screams, her 12-year-old cousin, who was on sixth floor rushed downstairs and saw her stuck in the lift door. He immediately alerted other family members. Her uncle removed the foor of the lift to free her, Koli said. The teenager was rushed to Shatabdi hospital in Govandi where she died during treatment. Her body was later shifted to Rajawadi hospital for post mortem procedures, Koli said.

“A few minutes before the incident, my wife and I stepped out to buy some household items. This is completely a result of the negligence of the society members. My in-laws had requested the society to cover the window with glass as many children peep from it and they were worried someone could get hurt,” said Ravi Kharavi, the girl’s father.

The police registered the FIR based on the parents’ complaint.

“The lift was not even working for the past two years and only became operational a week ago, during Diwali. Many children of the building play and peep through the window. If the society had heeded the request and the lift door window was fitted with a glass pane, my niece would have been alive,” the girl’s aunt, Bhavana, said.