PUNE: A 23-year-old automobile company employee, who volunteered to help an elderly woman hit by a vehicle on the Pune-Nashik highway in Chakan early Tuesday morning, died after a speeding bus knocked him down in the same spot.
The accident occurred around 5.30am at Balajinagar in Chakan when victim Pawan Koli of Medankarwadi was waiting for his office bus. “Koli had done an ITI course and was working in an automobile company plant in Chakan,” his room-mate Sachin Patil told TOI.
Assistant sub-inspector Suresh Gorde of the Chakan police said that on Tuesday around 5.30am, Koli and his colleagues were waiting for their company bus near a fuel-refilling station at Balajinagar in Chakan. “An elderly woman was crossing the Pune-Nashik highway when a vehicle hit her in front of Koli and his colleagues,” Gorde said.
He added that Koli noticed that the woman fell on the road and he ran towards her and helped her stand up. “The woman suffered minor injuries. He then helped the woman cross the highway but before he could return to his colleagues, a speeding bus knocked him down,” Gorde said. He said Koli suffered injuries in his head, chest and right leg. “Though his colleagues rushed him to a hospital immediately, he was pronounced brought dead by the doctors,” Gorde said.
He added that the bus driver did not stop after the hit, and Koli’s colleagues were thus unable to see the registration number of the vehicle.
“They told us that it was a white bus that drove towards Nashik. It could be a bus ferrying employees of some company in Chakan MIDC,” Gorde said.
He said there are CCTV cameras installed at the nearby gas station. “But incidentally the cameras couldn’t get a grab of the accident site,” Gorde said.
Koli is survived by parents and younger brother. “His body was sent to his native village in Jalgaon district for cremation,” Patil said.
