Wet leased BEST bus gutted in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar; conductor sustains minor injury, passengers safe

Mumbai, A BEST bus on wet lease from a private operator was gutted in a fire in Ghatkopar in Mumbai on Monday, officials said. The conductor of the bus suffered minor injuries to the hand while all the passengers were safe, Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking public relations officer Sudas Samant said. “The bus, which belongs to Dharavi depot, was plying on route 303 from Bandra station east to Mulund east. It caught fire at Gandhi Nagar junction at 1:30pm during a short trip to Ghatkopar. The fire took place when the passengers had alighted at the end of the trip and the bus was making a U-turn to depart for Bandra east,” Samant said. “The driver noticed black smoke emanating from the engine and took the bus to the side of the road but by then the fire had spread. The conductor received minor burn wounds on the hand. By the time the fire brigade doused the blaze, the vehicle was gutted. The cause of the fire is not yet known,” the official added. The incident caused traffic snarls for some time on the arterial LBS Road, other officials said. The ill-fated bus, running on CNG, was owned by Mateshwari company, a private operator that has given 700 buses on wet lease to BEST, they said. These officials said it was the first incident of its kind since September last year when an electric bus of a private operator caught fire at Dharavi depot. Before that five buses had caught fire in separate incidents. In February 2023, BEST had taken 400 wet leased CNG buses off the roads after three incidents of fire within a short period of time. The civic-run BEST Undertaking operates around 3,700 buses on 483 routes, transporting over 30 lakh passengers daily in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and extended suburbs.
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