Latest News For 'Mumbai Road Accidents'
May 21st, 2007
Navi Mumbai: On a lazy Sunday afternoon, Mulund-based car dealer Haresh Bhai Gagwani (42) decided to check out some new cars on sale in Belapur CBD (central business district). The trip to Navi Mumbai helped him nab a fleeing motorist involved in a hit-and-run accident along Palm Beach Road.
“At around 3.45 pm, my uncle and I had reached the Seawoods end of Palm Beach Road, where I was stunned to see a driver in a silver Tata Indigo (MH 06 W 7686) hit a woman and her child while they were crossing the road. The driver did stop a little distance ahead to look back at the damage done, and then fled at a speed of nearly 100 km per hour,’’ recalled Gagwani.
He instinctively started chasing the driver, and even shouted at him to stop, but the accused (later identified as 38-year-old Santoshkumar Balkumar) kept dodging Gagwani to escape on the Palm Beach Road. He even took a sharp U-turn at Belapur to turn back towards Nerul side, but Gagwani managed to block him at the roadside after a 2 km chase.
The victims—27-year-old Josabin Makan Mopan and her seven-month son Sunil Makan Mopan—have been seriously injured in the accident. Josabin is a labourer working at Palm Beach Road.
As soon as Gagwani corned the fleeing driver, he immediately pulled him out and caught him in a bear-like hug so that he did not run away. At the same time, another motorist Amrit Pal Singh, who runs a local crime magazine ‘Gunheshod’ noticed the struggle between Gagwani and the accused driver and immediately called the police wireless van to the spot.
“He (Balkumar) kept threatening me as I held him tight, but I coolly told him not to show his ‘dadagiri’ and actually show some ‘insaniyat’ (humanity), as he had grievously hurt the woman and her child who were still lying on the road,’’ said Gagwani.
Meanwhile, Amrit Pal Singh stopped a motorcyclist to help take the bleeding child to hospital; the woman was still lying motionless, and later taken to a local hospital. Many people had gathered on Palm Beach Road to watch, but none came forward to help Gagwani and Singh.
The accused driver also seemed to be drunk. “If Haresh Bhai had not managed to chase and nab this drunk driver, he probably would have escaped from facing any police action,’’ said Amrit Pal Singh.
Meanwhile, the zonal deputy commissioner of police, Amar Jadhav, said that the accused Balkumar, who is a Nerul-based construction contractor has been arrested for rash and negligent driving under section 279 of the IPC. “We have also sent the accused for a medical test to see if he was drunk,’’ said Jadhav.
Source: TOI(Mumbai epaper)
May 9th, 2007
Navi Mumbai: Five people, including four women, were killed and seven injured when the vehicle in which they were travelling collided with a private bus at Alibaug on the Mumbai-Goa highway on Tuesday morning.
According to the Raigad police, the victims, all residents of Bhandup, were returning to Mumbai from Ratnagiri in a Tata Qualis. When the vehicle reached Veer village (Raigad district) at around 5.45 am, it collided with a Volvo bus coming from the opposite direction and turned turtle, trapping the passengers inside.
Four of the dead are believed to be from the same family. The injured are being treated at KEM hospital.
Source: TOI(Mumbai epaper)
May 3rd, 2007
Navi Mumbai: Accidents continue to occur regularly along the 9-km-long Palm Beach Road that connects Belapur and Vashi in Navi Mumbai.
On Wednesday, a truck fell into a trench at the Nerul end of Palm Beach Road, making for quite an unusual sight. The trench had been dug to fix a new water pipeline. It is still not clear how the truck (MH06-C-6200) landed almost vertically in the ditch.
Sanpada end of the road, leaving the driver injured. Zonal deputy commissioner of police Amar Jadhav told that most accidents in this stretch occur due to over-speeding. “The traffic police has started using speed guns to fine motorists who cross the 60 kmph limit on Palm Beach Road but I find that vehicles are still zooming at over 80 kmph on this six-lane road,” he said.
In 2005, there were over 45 accidents on the road and 10 fatalities, and the next year there were over 50 accidents and 11 deaths. This year, there have been seven road deaths.
Source : TOI (epaper)
April 27th, 2007
Mumbai: The spate of accidents on the city’s roads continues. A Honda City car rammed into a motorcycle on the Western Express Highway on Thursday morning, killing the pillion rider. The biker was hurt.
The impact of the collision was so severe that it sent the bike hurtling across the road. Basavraj Manekar (30), a chauffeur who was at the car’s wheel, has been booked for rash driving and causing death due to negligence.
According to the police, the incident occurred around 11.50 am below the Andheri flyover bridge. Mohammad Sadiq Hussain (25) and Zakir Hussain Jameel Ansari (24) were on the bike, driving under the bridge. Manekar was on the bridge, headed in the direction of Vile Parle.
“The car, which had gathered speed on the descent, reached the end of the flyover around the same time as the bike. Manekar could not control the vehicle and rammed the bike from behind,” said a police officer. The bike careened for several metres before ending up beneath a Best bus. Police officers said Manekar came forward to help the victims. The duo were taken to Cooper hospital where Ansari was declared dead before admission.
In a separate incident, on Wednesday, a Tata Sumo ferrying a group of call centre workers home, toppled over after hitting a traffic island on the Western Express highway at Goregaon. The driver and four employees were injured.
Source: TOI(Delhi epaper)
April 26th, 2007
Mumbai: Officials from the Regional Transport Authority have inspected the Palio and Swift cars that were smashed in a six-vehicle collision at Andheri on Tuesday. Two teenagers—Tarosh Diwanji, 18, and Abhishek Sethi, 19—perished in the accident. Diwanji was in the backseat of the Swift and Sethi was driving the Palio.
The cars are in the possession of the Versova police. Officials took photographs and made notes on the damage to the vehicles. These notes will be incorporated by the police in the chargesheet.
Meanwhile, some of Sethi’s family members told TOI that they suspect that some of the group in the Swift had consumed liquor. While Gaurav Awlani, 21, was driving the Swift, his friend Manish Chaturvedi, 28, was also in the car. “We reached Cooper Hospital within 20 minutes of the accident.
The boys from the Swift had been brought there for medical tests and they were smelling of liquor,’’ said Sethi’s cousin, Shruti, who is a mental health professional.
The police, meanwhile, maintained that blood samples of Awlani and Leo Caselino, 51, who was driving the tempo that collided with the Swift, had been sent for a detailed analysis. The reports are pending, they said.
Police said the Swift car is estimated to have been moving at 80 to 90 kmph. “The number plates of the Swift came off. Its rear end was shattered and sides deeply dented. The car was at tremendous speed despite the spot being an open junction where vehicles are constantly moving,’’ said an official.
The Swift banged the tempo at Four Bungalows junction, opposite the Kamdhenu shopping complex. The tempo had been coming down a road perpendicular to J P Road, which the Swift was on. The
Swift then hit the Palio, which was travelling in the same direction on J P Road. The Swift then hit a parked auto, which crashed into a parked milk van. Meanwhile, Caselino’s tempo spun and hit an Indigo travelling behind it.
Awlani and Caselino were booked for rash driving, causing hurt by a negligent act, causing grievous hurt by a negligent act and causing death due to negligence. They were let off on a cash bail of Rs 5,000 each by the metropolitan magistrate at Andheri on Tuesday itself.
Senior inspector Amarjeet Singh had told TOI that basic traffic rules, like stopping or going slow at signals, had not been llowed by the drivers.
Source: TOI(Mumabi epaper)
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