Disabled will wheel into Bombay High Court

A portable ramp, which will enable wheelchair-bound persons to attend court proceedings,
was installed on a test-run basis in courtroom No.52.

The Bombay High Court will soon be accessible to all. A portable ramp, which will enable wheelchair-bound persons to attend court proceedings, was installed on a test-run basis in courtroom No.52 on the second floor of the court building on Wednesday evening.There was a sizeable crowd outside the second-floor court room, where the Chief Justice presides over hearings after court hours on Wednesday evenings, watching Nilesh Singit of ADAPT (Able Disabled All People Together), an NGO, and design engineer Abhishek Ray overseeing the installation of the hydraulic ramp on one of the doors leading to the courtroom.

The ramp was installed and tested for its capacity to support a wheelchair-bound person. It will enable to wheel in a physically challenged person straight onto the raised platform in the courtroom. “The ramp is quite compact and can be stored under the raised platform. It can be taken out whenever required and can be installed easily by two persons,” said Singit, who suffers from cerebral palsy.“This would be a first for any high court,” said lawyer Jamshed Mistry, who has represented the cause of the physically challenged in several cases.“It has been agreed that the wheelchair-bound person would come in before the proceedings begin so that he/she could be let in without disrupting the proceedings.

There had already been a ramp on the ground floor to enable physically handicapped persons to enter and use the elevators. But this was the first time that the facility was installed in individual courtrooms.

DNA