Mumbai: Eighteen persons died while 14 others were injured when a speeding truck packed with labourers and their heavy luggage, lost control and rammed into a six-feet-high roadside barricade and then turned turtle on a winding, s-shaped bend of the Pune-Bangalore highway near Khandala, Khambatki Ghat in Satara on Tuesday morning. According to the Satara Superintendent of Police (SP), Sandip Patil, the truck, was ferrying construction labourers from Bijapur district in Karnataka to Pune when it met with the accident at 4.30 am.
The deceased included six women, 10 men and two children besides, the truck driver, police said.
The injured were rushed to Satara’s civic hospital and Joglekar private nursing home. The condition of some of the injured victims, who were moved to Khandala rural hospital, was reported as stable. The police suspect the truck driver could have either been sleepy or in a drunken state, which will be clarified by the post-mortem report. The victims hail from Tikoti in Bijapur district of Karnataka and were on way to the Shirwal industrial estate near Pune for working at a construction site. The police have booked the labour contractor for negligence.
Talking to The Asian Age, SP Patil said, “The speeding truck was taking a sharp turn on the highway, when the driver lost control and the truck crashed into a 6-feet high roadside barrier before it overturned.” SP Patil said, “ The victims, were thrown against each other with their luggage. Some of them were even thrown outside the vehicle due to the impact, which left 18 dead on the spot. Those who survived the impacted had injuries on the head, the chest and trauma, ” the SP added.
“We have pressed section 304 A of the IPC, which pertains to causing death by negligence, against the contractor and owner of the firm to which the labourers were associated with. The probe is at an initial stage and we need to talk to the survivors, who are in a state of shock now,” the SP said.
