Team India Victory Parade After-effects: Damaged Cars, Dozens Of Footwear On Mumbai Streets

Mumbai’s Marine Drive area saw a massive crowd on Thursday, that was gathered to join Team India’s T20 World Cup victory procession. It is estimated that about 3 lakh people flocked to the parade that followed players on an open-top bus. The parade concluded at the Wankhede Stadium. However, the celebrations were marred by instances of injuries and people fainting due to suffocation caused by overcrowding and poor crowd management by the authorities. Fortunately, the situation did not escalate to a stampede.

Now, a video has gone viral that shows streets of Mumbai littered with swamps of footwear, reportedly lost by those who joined the victory parade. An X user Vaibhav Kokat shared this video on X and praised the sanitation workers for sweeping up the mess and footwear piled on the roads. He wrote, “The previous night, the Marine Drive area was littered with thousands of shoes and sandals, and these workers were busy removing the garbage until dawn. By morning, they had restored Mumbai to its original state.”

This post got over 1.9 lakh views in less than a day. The video triggered a discussion on civic duty and many wondered how many fans went back barefoot after losing their footwear to the crowd.

An user commented, “I was in Tokyo, I lived in Beijing but never saw such trash thrown on the street?? What’s wrong with Indian people? Why can’t the government teach them to stay clean, carry their trash and put them into the trash cans??? It can be taught (encouragement, education and heavy fines).”

Someone else observed, “Looks really crazy here. The crowd must be so maddening that people lost their footwear. So many must have returned bare feet.”

Another person wrote, “Can our fans and citizens be more responsible? Celebrations do not mean making the environment dirty and filthy! Even Japanese people celebrate. Remember how they cleaned the football stadium after the match even in venues outside of Japan? Salute to the sanitation workers for their work!”

Ravi Solanki, who was at the victory procession, recalled the horrifying scene of overcrowding and told ANI, “The crowd kept increasing. The police were not managing the situation. People started shouting, after which some people fell on each other. It was very unorganised. There was nobody to manage. This happened between 8:15-8:45 pm.”

The incident comes just days after more than 100 people lost their lives in a stampede at Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras.