Mumbai woman killed in tree fall: Husband asks CM Fadnavis to act against BMC

CM told Rajat Nath, the husband of former Doordarshan anchor Kanchan who was killed last week after a tree fell on her in Chembur, that action has been initiated

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday told Rajat Nath, the husband of former Doordarshan anchor Kanchan who was killed last week after a tree fell on her in Chembur, that action has been initiated against the garden department of the Mumbai civic body.

Fadnavis said he will look into the matter to ensure compensation for the family.

Accompanied by BJP leader Shaina NC, Nath met Fadnavis on Friday. He alleged inaction by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had led to Kanchan’s death and demanded a case be lodged against those responsible.

Nath complained that in February this year, the owner of the plot had approached the BMC to cut the tree.

The civic body inspected it and decided on pruning some of the branches of the dead tree instead of cutting it.

The owner had even paid for the pruning, he said.

READ: Husband demands FIR against BMC officials

If the BMC had paid heed to the application and cut the dead tree, the incident would not have occurred. Fadnavis assured Nath and his family members, who accompanied him, that action has been initiated against the garden department of BMC.

Kanchan, a former television news reader with Doordarshan, was on her way home from her yoga classes last Thursday when the tree fell on her, injuring her neck, at Kurla Road near Swastik Park at Chembur East.

Nath was rushed to the hospital by vendors who were around at the time of the incident.

She died three days later .

Falling trees in the monsoon is one of the biggest hazards in the city. Experts have blamed the haphazard way in which authorities pruned trees and the concretisation around the roots, which make the trees weak, as the main causes of these falls.

The BMC, in its pre-monsoon activity, had undertaken an exercise to prune 60,000 trees across the city.