“Mumbai watermelon deaths have triggered panic across wholesale fruit markets after four members of a South Mumbai family died under mysterious circumstances investigators still cannot fully explain.“
Mumbai- What began as a suspected food poisoning case inside a cramped apartment in Pydhonie has spiraled into one of Mumbai’s strangest public health mysteries in years, wiping out watermelon sales across wholesale markets while investigators chase toxicology clues that still refuse to line up cleanly.
Abdullah Dokadia, 40, his wife Nasreen, 35, and daughters Ayesha, 16, and Zainab, 13, died on April 25 after vomiting violently hours after eating watermelon following a late-night biryani and pulao dinner attended by 5 relatives. Police said the guests ate the same meal around 10.30pm but did not consume the watermelon later served at roughly 1am.
Doctors at Sir JJ Hospital quickly became suspicious. “if this were food poisoning, the clinical picture would be very different”, hospital superintendent Dr Sanjay Surase said. The victims reportedly slipped into semi-conscious states within hours, while doctors observed rapid neurological decline and severe kidney damage.
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The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration collected partially eaten watermelon, leftover chicken pulao, spices, dates, drinking water and rice samples from the family’s Bhendi Bazaar residence. Testing has slowed because watermelon vendors abruptly vanished from nearby markets after panic spread through Crawford Market, Byculla and Navi Mumbai.
By Tuesday morning, watermelon sellers near Crawford Market had started pulling fruit off their carts without waiting for instructions from police or food inspectors. Some covered the stacks with cloth sheets. Others simply disappeared.
Nobody wanted customers asking questions.
At Navi Mumbai’s APMC wholesale market, traders said watermelon prices crashed from roughly Rs 10-35 per kilogram to nearly Rs 5-7 within two days as buyers stopped showing up. One juice seller near Byculla claimed orders for watermelon juice had fallen “almost by half” since news of the deaths spread online.
The rumours only made things worse. Viral posts claiming watermelon becomes poisonous after being eaten with biryani circulated widely across WhatsApp groups before doctors publicly dismissed the theory. “There is no scientific basis” for that claim, one senior physician told reporters.
Now the case has spiralled far beyond a suspected food poisoning incident.
Meanwhile, investigators are quietly examining several possibilities, including toxic contamination, deliberate poisoning and financial stress inside the household. Police are also reviewing an older 2019 fraud case in which Abdullah Dokadia was reportedly expected to testify.
Inside Mumbai’s fruit markets, though, most traders are focused on something simpler.
They just want customers to start buying watermelon again.
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