Mumbai-Bangalore highway accident: Three of Mumbai family among 6 dead

of a Mumbai-based family. They have

been identified as Ravindra Tukaram Savant (35), his wife Sarika (30) and daughter
Revati Ravindra Savant (10), residents of Dombivali, in Mumbai, and natives of Javali in Satara district.

The other three deceased have been identified as Subhash Vinayak Choudhari (29) of Dombivali, Mumbai, a family friend of the Savants; Balaji Tukaram Rathod (35) and Mahembar Yadav Gaikwad (23) of Tuljapur in Osmanabad district.

Police constable Harish Baburao Gaikwad has registered a case at the Sinhagad Road police station. As per his statement, Shivaji Ravindra Pawar informed the police control room around 8 am about the accident.

Soon, a police team reached the spot. “The driver of a 16-wheeler dumper carrying coal stone mix lost control of the vehicle and hit a private bus. The bus and dumper then collided with two SUVs and a six-seater autorickshaw. The dumper then hit two motorcycles, two cars, a scooter and a van at the foot of the bridge.

The dumper, one of the cars and the van rammed into the fencing wall of the bridge. The impact was so severe that the fencing wall broke and the vehicles fell and crashed into trees on the slope between the service road and highway. The van and the car were crushed under the dumper.

Only the driver was in the van, while five people were travelling in the car. The police and Pune fire brigade team led by their chief, Prashant Ranpise, initiated rescue operation. The firemen had to cut the metallic parts of the vehicles to remove the bodies.

They managed to rescue a girl, Rachana Savant (14), from the car. However, Rachana’s parents, sister and family friend, Choudhari, died. The other two deceased included a pedestrian, Rathod, who worked as a labourer in Dhayari, and a painter, Gaikwad, from Pashan, who was on his way to work in Urali Devachi on a motorcycle. The six bodies were sent to Sassoon General Hospital for postmortem.

Meanwhile, Rachana and some other injured, identified as Bhalchandra Vitthal Kalurkar (42) and Rupesh Rajendra Palasdevkar (34), both residents of Dhankawadi in Pune, Balasaheb Vitthal Ghadge (56) of Kondhwa and Sharad Sarjerao More (54) from Satara, were admitted to different private hospitals for treatment.

The mishap created panic as a large crowd gathered at the spot, causing a major traffic jam. Long traffic snarls were witnessed on Wadgaon bridge for a couple of hours. Additional police force had to be deployed at the accident spot to bring the situation under control. The police said the driver of the dumper, Santosh Kevat, who fled the spot after the mishap, was later arrested.

Family on its way back after attending wedding in Satara 

Police said Ravindra Tukaram Savant operated a business of CCTV camera installations in Mumbai. The Savant family, residents of Mumbai, had visited their native place in Satara to attend the wedding of Sarika’s sister.

Ravindra’s brother Hanumant Savant told mediapersons that the family was on its way back to Mumbai after their four-day stay in Satara.