21 killed in three separate road accidents across Maharashtra
Four members of one family, nine women and children, and eight more died in road accidents in Ahilyanagar, Bhandara and Nanded on Thursday.
Thursday proved disastrous for three districts of Maharashtra. Twenty-one people were killed in three separate major road accidents in Ahilyanagar, Bhandara and Nanded, while several others were critically injured and admitted to hospital. The respective police stations are investigating all three incidents.
On the Ahilyanagar-Kalyan highway, an Eicher tempo and a WagonR car collided head-on near Hotel Sandeep in Bhalwani Shivar around 2 am on Thursday. Four members of the same family travelling in the car, Shakeel Shaikh, Salma Shaikh, Iqbal Shaikh and Sumaiya Shaikh, were killed. The family was reported to be from the Malvani area of Mumbai. Shakeel Shaikh was driving with his family to Ahilyanagar to meet relatives when the tempo struck their car in Bhalwani Shivar. The car was badly damaged in the collision. Local residents rushed the injured to the rural hospital in Parner, where doctors declared all four dead. The complaint states that the tempo driver fled the scene after the accident. Parner police are investigating the case.
A second accident occurred near Pimpalgaon in the Lakhani-Sakoli taluka of Bhandara district, where an Eicher and a Trax vehicle collided head-on. Six women and three children travelling from Chhattisgarh to Nagpur were killed. The toll was initially put at eight, but rose to nine after another woman, being taken to Nagpur for treatment, died on the way. Among the dead was a 55-year-old woman, while most of the other women were around 35 years old, and all three children were under five. The women were travelling to their parental homes in Nagpur for the Teej festival when the accident occurred. Initial reports said 16 to 17 people were travelling in the two vehicles. The injured have been admitted to government hospitals in Bhandara and Nagpur. The driver survived the crash and is undergoing treatment.
A third accident occurred on the Nanded-Bhokar road around 6 pm on Thursday, when a truck and a pickup vehicle collided head-on, killing eight people and critically injuring seven others. The dead include a husband and wife and two brothers. The deceased have been named as Pandurang Lingu Waghmare, Laxmibai Waghmare, Sayyed Altamesh Sayyed Alimoddin, Shaikh Firoz, Balwan Pawar, Shahid Saudagar and Krishna Pawar, while one more victim is yet to be identified. All seven injured have been admitted to the government medical hospital in Nanded.
