KALYAN: A 26-year-old man from Ambernath, on his way to work at a pharmaceutical company Saturday, died on the spot after he fell off his scooter while navigating a pothole in Kalyan and was crushed under a bus that was right behind him. This comes days days after CM Eknath Shinde had instructed public agencies that roads in Thane district be made free of potholes. Acting on the father's complaint, cops have booked the bus driver for death due to rash and negligent driving.
Rider crushed under bus after scooter passes over pothole
A 26-year-old man from Ambernath died on the spot after he fell off his two-wheeler soon after it had passed over a pothole in Kalyan around 8.30 am on Saturday. The man, Ankit Thaiva, who was on his way to office, was crushed under a bus that was right behind his scooter.
This comes days after chief minister Eknath Shinde had instructed public agencies that roads in Thane district be made free of potholes at the earliest.
Ankit, who worked for a pharmaceutical company in Navi Mumbai, had left home around 8am, like he usually did. Around 10.30 am, his father, Rajkumar, who is employed as a driver, said he received a call from the police, informing that his son had met with an accident.
The man's father later lodged a police complaint based on information given to the cops by people who were at the spot when the accident took place. The complaint states that when Ankit's two-wheeler was at Mahada Colony, near Khoni village on Kalyan-Badlapur Road, the rider "lost his balance due to a huge pothole and fell down".
A bus belonging to Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation, which was behind, ran over the rider who was lying on the road. He died on the spot. The body was taken to the civic-run Shastri Nagar Hospital at Dombivli for a post-mortem. Ankit, who lived in Anand Nagar, is survived by his parents and an elder brother.
Acting on the father's complaint, the police have booked the bus driver for causing death due to rash and negligent driving.
A local from near the accident spot, Kunal Patil, told TOI that workers from MIDC (Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation), which has jurisdiction over the area, visited the spot after the accident. He said they had done a stopgap job of filling the potholes using pieces of stone and brick. "But the stones could have come loose and so a few of us from the village re-filled the potholes with cement," he said.
Earlier this month, two senior citizens from Kalyan were injured after falling on a potholed road. The Kalyan-Dombivli civic body claimed that it has started filling potholes, but said that the craters keep re-surfacing after getting battered by the heavy rainfall of this season.
