Oil Spill Robbery in Mumbai

The great oil spill robbery in Mumbai.

Villagers at Uran have been having a field day, collecting items for their evening tea and snacks. Unfortunately, the items can prove to be very dangerous, as they have been plucked out of an oily sea.

Nine containers from the vessel MSC Chitra washed ashore at Uran yesterday, and villagers wasted no time in rummaging through them. They broke the containers and started taking the tea powder and biscuits from them, little realising that they could be contaminated.

The entire shoreline of Uran was flooded with open tea bags, medicines and biscuit packets swimming in oil. While some containers broke when the high tide lashed the containers against the rocks, others were broken by the villagers looking for some bounty.

On Tuesday, when MiDDAY visited the Uran beach, some policemen were spotted stopping people from venturing on to the beach. However many children and women were seen scaling the compound walls of neighbouring houses and heading towards the abandoned containers. When told that they could be harmful, one young boy retorted, "Sab le gaye, aap hum ko kyon bol rahe ho?"

Sushant Bhosale (17), a Std XI student from Anand Nagar, was spotted returning home with a bag full of tea powder. He said, "I found the tea powder in one of the containers. My father runs a store in the village, I will give it to him, we will sell the tea powder." Kalpesh Mhatre (27) of Navgaon village, was happy that he would not have to spend money on buying tea powder for the next one year. "I have collected sufficient tea powder."

Sunil Purav, the local Sena leader from the village blamed the local administration and police for not taking adequate preventive measures. "The containers have been floating in the sea since Saturday. I called the local police, but they did not revert. The police deployed a bandobast only on Tuesday. By then most of the food items were stolen," he said.

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