In the second consecutive mishap to take place in 24 hours along the Pune-Mumbai Expressway, an official with the Kolhapur District Central Cooperative (KDCC) Bank was killed and two others travelling with him were severely injured after their car was rammed from behind by a truck in early on Wednesday.
The deceased, identified as Ranveer Chavan, 51, and hailing from Sangli district, was with the credit disbursement section of the Kolhapur DCC, police sources said.
Mr. Chavan was travelling with two authorities of the Sar Senapati Santaji Ghorpade Sugar Factory in Kagal in Kolhapur district, which is controlled by senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and State Rural Development Minister Hasan Mushrif.
The trio had set out from Pune late on Monday when a truck carrying industrial cargo hit their car from behind at high speed near Khopoli on the Mumbai-Pune expressway around 3 a.m., mangling the vehicle, the highway police said.
While Mr. Chavan was killed on the spot, his co-travellers were rushed to the MGM Hospital in Navi Mumbai.
Meeting with Minister
According to sources, the bank official was scheduled to meet with Mr. Mushrif at the Mantralaya on Tuesday.
The accident led to traffic congestion for a brief period before authorities, with the help of personnel from the ‘Delta Force’, cleared the debris away.
This is the second incident to take place on the expressway, notorious for its rising rate of fatalities, in a little over 24 hours.
Five persons standing near an exit point on the Eway stretch near Khandala were killed late on Sunday after they were crushed under a tempo coming down at high speed.
A sixth person, who was part of the group, sustained grievous injuries after the tempo, whose driver allegedly could not control the vehicle owing to its speed, turned on its side at a sharp bend.
All six were workers at the Talegaon MIDC.
In November last year, a Swift DZire car had rammed into a tanker near the Khalapur toll plaza along the expressway, killing four persons of a family and injuring two more.
In that case as well, the accident had occurred early in the morning with the driver of the Swift vehicle losing control and ramming into the rear of the stationary HP gas tanker.
On November 4, 2019, five persons were killed and 30 injured after a private passenger bus turned turtle and fell into a valley near Khandala.
