4 killed, 22 injured after truck hits bus on Mumbai-Bengaluru …
Four people were killed and 22 others were injured after a private passenger bus on its way to Mumbai from Kolhapur was hit by a truck from behind on the Mumbai-Bengaluru Highway at the Narhe Ambegaon area in Pune in the early hours of Sunday.
The accident was one of the three back-to-back mishaps in a radius of one-and-a-half kilometres in two hours, with no severe casualties reported from the other two accidents.
Around 18 passengers were stuck inside the bus after the accident. (Express)
Officials from Bharti Vidyapeeth police station said the major accident occurred around 2 am in front of the Swaminarayan Temple in Narhe Ambegaon when the bus, which started from Kolhapur on Saturday night and was taking passengers to Dombivli in Mumbai, was hit by a truck from behind. The driver of the truck, which was transporting gunny bags of sugar, claimed that a brake failure of his vehicle led to the mishap.
“Four people have been killed and 22 persons have sustained injuries. The injured are being treated at various hospitals. A probe is being conducted into the causes of the accident,” said inspector Vijay Kumbhar, in-charge of the Bharti Vidyapeeth police station.
Officials said the deceased included two men and two women. Of the 22 injured, 19 were bus passengers, three from the truck’s cabin, including its driver. After the impact, the truck turned on its side. Both vehicles suffered hefty damages in the accident. Identities of all the deceased and the injured persons were being ascertained, the police said.
#Pune[1] | At least four persons were killed and 22 others were injured after a private passenger bus on its way to Mumbai was hit by a truck from behind on the Mumbai-Bangalore Highway at Jambhulwadi in Pune in the early hours of Sunday.
Read here: https://t.co/Fmc9BnLiKO pic.twitter.com/Qm489mgOSt[2][3]
— The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) April 23, 2023[4][5][6]
Rescue teams from the fire brigades of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (PMRDA) were deployed after receiving information about the accident. Fire officer Gajanan Patrudkar said, “Our rescue teams initially took out 15-16 persons and dispatched them to hospitals in ambulances. Four to five people who were grievously injured and were trapped in damaged parts of the bus structure were rescued using hydraulic and pneumatic tools and sent to the hospital. A lot of oil and fuel spilled on the road, along with the sugar from the gunny bags in the truck that got scattered after the accident. This mixture of oils and fuels, soil and sand and sugar was then cleared from the road.”
Pune Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer Ayush Prasad said, “After receiving the call from the fire brigade, multiple ambulances of the Maharashtra Emergency Medical Services responded and shifted the injured to the hospital.”
Traffic Control Branch Inspector Arjun Botre said, “A while after the accident, we had to stop the traffic on the Bengaluru to Mumbai highway corridor to take the damaged vehicles off the roads and clear the spillage.” Officials said the traffic stoppage on the Bengaluru to Mumbai corridor led to heavy jams. On the other hand, the traffic on the opposite corridor too had slowed down for around two hours, with many drivers slowing down near the accident spot to see what had happened, officials said.
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Deputy Commissioner of Police Smartana Patil said, “The driver of the truck claimed that the brakes of his vehicle had failed, causing the accident. This claim will be examined. Vehicle inspectors from the Regional Transport Office (RTO) will examine the truck and submit a report, and accordingly, further course of the investigation will be decided.”
In the first accident, at 1.30 am, a truck that had halted following an engine failure was hit by another truck from behind. In the third accident at 3.30 am, a truck carrying chemical powder, due to a brake failure, hit at least three parked vehicles, causing damage to them. The driver of the truck was injured in the accident.
The area where these three accidents were reported is less than one-and-a-half kilometres away from Navale Bridge, where in November last year, a truck carrying gunny bags of rice went on to hit or brush as many as 48 vehicles, of which 24 were heavily damaged, and caused injuries to 25 people, of whom 13 required hospitalisation or in-patient treatment.
References
- ^ #Pune (twitter.com)
- ^ https://t.co/Fmc9BnLiKO (t.co)
- ^ pic.twitter.com/Qm489mgOSt (t.co)
- ^ The Indian Express (indianexpress.com)
- ^ IndianExpress (indianexpress.com)
- ^ April 23, 2023 (twitter.com)