Actor Gurfateh Pirzada says his home was among those hit by firecracker-related fires in Mumbai this Diwali. The Lust Stories 3 actor said stray crackers burnt his entire balcony and spread into nearly his whole room.
Gurfateh posted the aftermath on Instagram Stories. One photo shows the balcony thick with smoke. Another shows the room inside, with the curtains drawn back to one side of the bed and some belongings moved around. He tagged the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Mumbai Police in the post.
His caption was blunt. He wrote that "The sheer stupidity of the masses is astounding", and went on to say the whole city felt like a gas chamber.
He also shared a screenshot of Mumbai's Air Quality Index (AQI) from Sunday evening, which showed a reading of 521. In a separate Story, he said he was angry at how people behaved the night before. He argued that a country so keen on having children shows little concern for the air those children breathe. He blamed a lack of governance and accountability, and said he was also worried about pets and stray animals during the noise.
Gurfateh's experience came on a night when pollution in the city spiked. Overnight, Navy Nagar recorded an AQI of 497 and several other areas crossed 400, leaving a thick haze over Mumbai in one of its worst air quality spells of the season. By 7 am, Kherwadi had the highest reading among the city's monitoring stations, at 264.
The Bombay High Court had banned the bursting of firecrackers in public places. On Saturday, the BMC asked 237 corporators to spread awareness in slums and densely populated areas about the harm firecrackers cause, amid concern over rising air and noise pollution.
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