Driver loses control trying to overtake truck at a steep bend.
Ten people, including a one-year-old child, were killed, and nine seriously injured when the jeep they were travelling in rammed into the rear of a trailer around 4.30am on Monday. The mishap took place on the newly-constructed Katraj bypass section of the Pune-Satara highway.
The police said that the deceased and the injured were members of three families travelling from Satara to Mumbai in the ill-fated jeep.
Pratap Dighavkar, superintendent of police (SP), Pune rural, along with highway safety patrol SP Jay Jadhav and deputy superintendent of police Ravindrasinh Pardeshi, went to the accident spot.
Jadhav said that most of the victims were residents of Satara, who used to work as labourers in construction projects in Mumbai. In the city, most of them stayed in Sion and Airloi.
They had gone home to attend a religious festival, and were returning to work on Monday. The jeep was stacked with sacks of onions, jowar and other food grains they were bringing back to Mumbai.
Jeep driver Sachin Hange, 22, was blamed by the police for the mishap. Pardeshi said that Hange, who is undergoing treatment at Sassoon Hospital, was driving at a very high speed.
“He tried to overtake the trailer at a steep bend, and lost control of the jeep. The vehicle broke through the trailer’s crash bars and rammed into its rear tyres,” Pardeshi said.
With the vehicles in a tangle, the jeep got dragged along with the trailer for quite a distance — a door of the jeep was found about a kilometre away from the spot where the vehicles came to a halt.
Trailer driver Annasaheb Chavan, who lodged a police complaint against Hange, told DNA that he felt the impact of the jeep ramming into the truck.
“My truck was carrying heavy steel coils. I decided not to brake abruptly as it could have resulted in another accident,” he said. The trailer’s rear tyres got burnt in the impact of the jeep hitting them.
A group of local residents and Falubhai, an autorickshaw driver, helped the police rush the injured to Sassoon Hospital.
The victims
The deceased are: Vaishali Dhope, 22; her husband, Jagannath Dhope, 30; Gajrabai Kapse, 30; Ravindra Dhok, 25; Seema Dhope, 25; her son, Shivam, 1; Ramchandra Dhope, 87; Balasaheb Dhok, 54; Sandeep Dhok, 25 (all residents of Satara) and Nitin Rupnawar, 22, resident of Solapur.
There were three kids among the nine injured — eight-month-old Shreya Kapse, Suyash Dhope, 2, and Shravani Kapse, 3.
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