Navi Mumbai tragedy: Cylinder blast blows up kitchen wall, kills two

It was supposed to be a simple job of replacing an empty cylinder with a filled one But things went horribly wrong for a family in a Nerul apartment The incident occurred at the CIDCObuilt Panchratna society in Sector 16 NerulAround 11 pm Shalaka Tondwalkar and her husband replaced the empty cylinder with a new filled one However they didnrsquot place the regulator properly and gas started leakingOn Monday night around 11 pm Shalaka Tondwalkar 51 ran out of gas She asked her husband Ravindra to help her exchange the empty cylinder with the fresh one After doing so the couple didnrsquot realise that the regulator on the new cylinder had not been affixed properly Gas started leaking from it and about 2025 minutes later the family realised itAbout 20 minutes later the family realised that LPG gas had leaked But their son Sachin made the mistake of switching off the electricity supply The spark from the switch triggered the blastHowever their son Sachin 24 made the mistake of trying to switch off the electricity supply No sooner did he flick the switch than the spark fuelled the gas and the cylinder exploded The impact was so powerful that the wall of the kitchen in their secondfloor flat went crashing downThe blast causes the kitchen wall of the apartment to fall on Tukaram Dighe and Sangeeta Deokar killing themUnfortunateIt was a terrible tragedy for two people who went running outside their building to see what the sudden blast was all about The broken portion of the Tondwalkarrsquos kitchen wall crushed themThe cylinder blast was so powerful that it ripped the wall off in the secondfloor apartment at Panchratna society PicSameer MarkandeThe dead were identified as Tukaram Dighe 55 who lived on the ground floor and Sangeeta Deokar 53 who resided in a firstfloor apartment Tukaramrsquos daughter Prachi 27 was also injured in the incidentVatsala Joshi 66 were among the 12 injured in the blastFire engines from Vashi CBD Belapur and Nerul fire stations immediately rushed to the spot Four vehicles were involved in the cooling work which went on till the wee hours of Tuesday A fire official on the spot said Deokarrsquos body was found below the staircase of the buildingSahil Kadam 10Vijay Rane chief fire officer Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation said ldquoThe gas mustrsquove leaked for some time before the blast In such cases explosions do not happen immediately The electric connections of all homes were disconnected as damage had already been caused to other homes apart from the one where the blast took placerdquoNobodyrsquos faultSenior Police Inspector Rajkumar Chaphekar of Nerul police station said ldquoItrsquos purely an accident Nobody is at fault But the son shouldnrsquot have fiddled with the switchrdquo Besides the two casualties twelve persons were injured in the freak incident They were rushed to Shushrusha Hospital in Sector 6 and Dr DY Patil Hospital in Sector 9 of NerulDr SR Tarlekar from Shushrusha Hospital told MiD DAY ldquoA total of five patients arrived at the hospital among which one had already died From the remaining four Shalaka Tondwalkar suffered a skull fracture and was put on ventilatorrdquo Another boy sevenyearold Sohan Pawar suffered a large scalp injury about 20 cm long Some of them were discharged today he added Eight patients were admitted to Dr DY Patil Hospital which included two women and two children