Road rage case: Builder ‘beats up’ national-level judo player, she fears injury may end her career

Vaishnavi Thube suffers career-threatening injury, builder secures bail

Vaishnavi Thube (Express Photo)

In a case of road rage, Vaishnavi Thube (23), a national-level judo player and wrestler, was allegedly beaten up by a builder. Thube, whose left arm was fractured in the beating, said the injury threatens to ruin her 10-year-old sporting career as well as her dream of becoming an Army officer.

The alleged incident took place in Fatimanagar area on July 30 when Thube was riding a two-wheeler with her sister-in-law as the pillion rider. A BMW, which was speeding, brushed past the two-wheeler, injuring Thube’s sister-in-law.

“… My sister-in-law was screaming in pain. I tried to ask the BMW driver to drive his vehicle properly. Instead of enquiring whether my sister-in-law was hurt, he started hurling abuses at us,” Thube told The Indian Express on Thursday.

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She said that a short distance away, both vehicles came to a halt at a traffic signal. “Even at the signal, the man kept abusing us… suddenly, he got out of the car with a wooden club and attacked me. Even as he hit me, no one at the signal came to our rescue. His family was also in the car. A woman inside the car… told my sister-in-law that she too would be beaten up if she didn’t keep quiet,” said Thube.

“He hit me repeatedly on the shoulder and on the back. When he tried to hit me on the head, I tried to block the club. The blow landed on my left arm so severely that the wooden club broke into two. It was only after the club broke that the man left. While leaving, he said ‘don’t you know I am’…” Thube said.

“We were not at all at fault. He came from behind, driving rashly and hitting us… instead of being apologetic, the man was acting as if it was our fault for driving ahead of him,” she said.

The two then went to the Wanavdi police station and registered a complaint, and also provided pictures of the man and his BMW. “The police took more than four hours to register the complaint,” she said.

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When contacted, Police Sub-Inspector Bhushan Potavde said, “We have registered an FIR under sections 325 and 326 of IPC against the man, who is a builder.”

On why the builder had not been arrested, Potavde said, “We went to his house but he was not there… the next day, he himself went to the court and secured bail…”.

Meanwhile, Thube said she now fears losing her career. “I don’t think I will again be able to play judo or take part in wrestling competitions. This is because the fracture is severe and I won’t be able to use my arms effectively,” she said.

“I wanted to appear for the Combined Defences Services Exam and become an Army officer. However, this doesn’t seem possible…For the Army exam, even someone with a minor injury is not allowed and I have suffered a senior one,” she said.

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Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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