Pune Beat

Truck kills one, injures another, mows down hutsOne person was killed and a bakery owner from Chakan grievously injured when a truck cras...

Truck kills one, injures another, mows down huts
One person was killed and a bakery owner from Chakan grievously injured when a truck crashed into a Kinetic Honda and a Rajdoot motorcycle before mowing down a dozen huts in Kharabwadi hamlet, about 30 kms from here on the Pune-Nashik highway on Sunday afternoon.

The mishap took place after the truck driver MH-04 34040, on its way to Talegaon Dhamdhere from Chakan, lost control. Gorakshnath Namdeo Gawte, a 30-year-old garage owner from Chakan, was killed instantaneously.

The owner of Chakan-based Hindustan Bakery, Naim Ahmed Ansari 40, was seriously injured. The labourers of the slum located along the road were attending a wedding at Kalchiwadi hamlet.

The driver fled the spot leaving the injured Naim in a pool of blood. About 15 minutes after the mishap, the drivers plying on the highway shifted him to Sassoon Hospital in Pune. The medicos said he was responding to treatment. He has suffered multiple fractures besides loss of blood, they added.

The Chakan police have filed a case against the truck driver. His identity could not be traced till late in the evening, according to sub-inspector in-charge of Chakan police station V R Gaikwad.

PCB to finally act against six-seaters
The Pune Cantonment Board PCB has now decided to launch a major crackdown on six-seaters from this weekend.

PCB had issued a public notice in the second week of April banning the plying of six-seaters through its congested areas and parking of private buses. Cantonment executive officer J Sharma told Pune Newsline that the board would work in association with the traffic department to work out a strategy for penalising the six-seaters plying through the cantonment.

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He said the cantonment board was awaiting the list of routes from the deputy commissioner of police traffic permitting the six-seaters to ply on certain areas of the cantonment. At present, six-seaters ply between Pune Station and Mundhwa through Council Hall which falls under under Pune Cantonment and also Kondhwa to Pune Station via Solapur Bazaar again a part of the cantonment board.

However, since the some of the autorickshaw owners had managed to obtain individual stay orders against the ban imposed within city limits, Sharma said they would have to be careful. Sharma said others would be caught red-handed and cases would be filed against them in the cantonment court.

The board had passed a resolution at its meeting on March 23 for regulating traffic and banning parking of heavy vehicles in civic areas. The board had also expressed its displeasure at being ignored both by the RTO and PMC before issuing a ban on six-seaters.