His son was killed on Mumbai’s crumbling roads – now Dadarao Bilhore fills potholes to prevent more deaths
Activists say contractors hired to repave roads do a bad job on purpose so the work will need to be done again the following year
Dadarao Bilhore smoothes the road surface, rests his shovel, looks to the sky and prays for his son, one of thousands of Indians killed every year in accidents caused by potholes.
Prakash Bilhore, a promising student, was just 16 when he died in July 2015 in Mumbai, India’s hectic financial and Bollywood capital of 20 million people.
To help deal with his grief, Prakash’s devastated father Dadarao decided he would do something about Mumbai’s roads, which like much of India’s, are notoriously shoddy.
Using sand and gravel collected from building sites, Bilhore has filled in almost 600 potholes across India’s financial capital in the past three years.
The 48-year-old vegetable vendor does it to pay tribute to his beloved son and in the hope that it will save lives.
