On Friday, the day Ruchita Balwalli’s parents should have been cutting a cake on her 19th birthday, they were left shedding tears on her demise in a road accident on Wednesday.

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Ruchita, a first-year electronics and telecommunication engineering student of the Sinhgad College of Engineering in Wadgaon Budruk, succumbed to injuries sustained in a head-on collision with a St Helena’s school bus on Wednesday.

The accident took place at 7.30 am on Nagardas Road in Aundh. According to Ramesh Satpute, an eye-witness to the accident, the school bus was being driven rashly and had overtaken a stationary bus before hitting Ruchita.

The teenager was thrown off her scooter by the impact. Satpute told DNA that he had taken a badly injured Ruchita to the nearby Medipoint Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries.

Police sub-inspector AN Narute of the Aundh police chowky told DNA on Friday that Ruchita had succumbed to head injuries in the accident and that they could not find any helmet at the accident site.

The mood in the Balwalli home on Friday was sombre. Her misty-eyed father Aswhin said, “Ruchita used to wear a helmet. But we do not know if she had strapped it on. It seems god takes away those who he loves the most.’’

Both parents, Ashwin and Vidya, recalled some of the recent incidents in the life of their younger daughter. Ashwin said, “Three days ago, Ruchita bought new clothes for herself and we were supposed to buy her a new cellphone as a birthday gift.’’

According to Ashwin, Ruchita had visited her relatives in Mumbai a few days ago and returned to Pune on Tuesday. “She had made plans for her birthday. Unfortunately, the accident has snatched her away from us.’’

Ruchita was a very intelligent student having secured 92% in both her standard 10 and 12 exams. She had also got a distinction in the first semester of her engineering examination. According to her distraught father, Ruchita was a happy and talkative girl.

“She never complained about anything,’’ the father said. Expressing concern about the traffic congestion in the Nagardas Road area, Ashwin said since many IT professionals lived there, nearly 40-45 private buses and many school buses used the road every day.

“It is a very dangerous situation. The authorities will have to install more traffic signals and road dividers to prevent such accidents in the future,’’ Ashwin said.

Ashwin works for a private company in Pune for the last 11 years, while the family originally hails from Karnataka.

Meanwhile, the Aundh police have arrested bus driver, Mahendrasingh Swarupsingh Barar (62) of Kondhwa, for rash driving. He was produced before the court on Thursday and released on bail.