Nearly a decade after a blaze tore through Hotel City Kinara in Mumbai’s Kurla, the Bombay High Court has sent a blunt message to the city’s municipal authorities: negligence has a price. ₹50 lakh per life, to be precise.
Eight young adults—most of them students between 18 and 20—died in the 2015 fire while eating dinner on an illegally constructed mezzanine floor. Now, their families have finally received judicial acknowledgment that their deaths were not an “accident,” but the result of systemic indifference by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
A Division Bench comprising Justices BP Colabawalla and Firdosh P Pooniwalla tore apart the civic body’s defense and quashed an earlier Lokayukta order that had denied compensation to the grieving families. Their verdict: had the BMC simply done its job, these eight lives would not have been lost.
“Had the municipal corporation discharged its legal duties—seizing the illegal LPG cylinders, revoking the restaurant’s license, and shutting down the hazardous mezzanine floor—this inferno would never have happened,” the bench noted in a sharply-worded ruling.
Behind this judicial fury lies a chilling timeline: multiple inspections between 2012 and 2015 flagged the restaurant’s violations. Unlicensed cooking on a mezzanine level, no fire clearance, commercial gas cylinders stored illegally—each warning was met with inaction. Just six weeks before the fire, BMC inspectors confirmed the dining area was still in use, and still, no action was taken.
The fire on October 16, 2015, was inevitable. What followed was silence, delay, and finger-pointing. In court, the BMC tried to shift the blame entirely onto the eatery’s owners and argued that compensation should be pursued via civil litigation. It even cited staffing shortages. But the court wasn’t buying it.
“This was not mere carelessness. This was a textbook example of institutional failure,” the judges ruled, applying the legal “but-for” test: but for the BMC’s failure to act, the fire wouldn’t have claimed those lives.
Citing Article 21 of the Constitution—the right to life—the court said this wasn’t just about financial compensation. It was about accountability. It was about telling the families that their children’s deaths mattered, that someone was responsible.
The amount—₹50 lakh per victim—was calculated with an eye on the victims’ young age, their education, their potential futures, and the inflationary gap since 2015. The BMC has 12 weeks to pay up. If it doesn’t, an additional 9% interest kicks in. The court left the door open for the civic body to recover the payout from other culpable parties if it so wishes.
This verdict isn’t just compensation—it’s a verdict on apathy, one the court has written in bold, flaming letters.
