Mumbai, Nov. 13: Bandra’s sympathies seemed divided today between the six allegedly drunken youths in a Toyota Corolla and the pavement sleepers they ran over and killed on Carter Road yesterday.

Local councillor Kavita Rodrigues asked the media to stop the “blame game” as she visited the family of Alistair Pareira, the 21-year-old engineering student and businessman’s son who was at the wheel and is now in a police lock-up.

Most of the six Catholic youngsters live in Rodrigues’s ward in Christian-dominated Bandra West.

“Everybody in this ward is like a family member to me. I came to find out things. There is nothing wrong in it. It is a sad incident and the media should stop the blame game and think how all the affected people — whether they are accused or victims — can be helped,” she said.

But relatives of the labourers said she hadn’t visited the Bhabha hospital where eight people critically injured in the accident are admitted.

Neither did any of the local Catholic leaders and senior police officers who met and advised Alistair’s father Anthony Pereira today.

Anthony, who owns a metallurgical unit where he makes dye moulds, sounded angry as he said: “My son is being held in a lock-up as a common criminal. Salman Khan did the same thing (mowed down pavement dwellers) four years back. Did they put him in the lock-up?”

He added: “My heart is full of compassion for them (the victims). But it is all God’s will. Whatever happens is His will.”

Local MLA and state food and civil supplies minister Baba Siddiqui, close to both Rodrigues and area MP Priya Dutt, didn’t visit the hospital, either.

The politicians’ lack of concern has left the labourers’ relatives angry. “They know we are migrant construction workers; we won’t be here to cast votes,” said Kurma Basappa, who lost son Deo and sister-in-law Laxmi.

“The police said the condition of the injured is not serious? Why don’t you go and see for yourself?” cried Rajamma who lost her five-year-old daughter Savita and brothers Chinappa and Mimanja.

The workers – who were laying sewerage pipes in the upscale Carter Road area to prevent flooding next monsoon -- are not from Tamil Nadu, as police had earlier said, but from Yedagiri in Andhra Pradesh.

The accused youths had been “defiant and rude” during the breathalyser test and interrogation, said inspector Shivaji Kolekar of Khar police station.

Five of them, booked under the Bombay Prohibition Act, were granted bail late last night by a holiday court.

Alistair, who is in custody charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, keeps shrugging the tragedy off as “just an accident”, Kolekar said.

“He constantly shrugs and talks back during interrogation. His other friends had the same callous attitude. The lone girl in the group, Ronalda Gilbert (20), is the only one who seemed shaken. She cried non-stop till her family took her home.”