At least 18 people, including four women and a child, were killed and 15 others injured, when a crowded mini truck in which they were travelling rammed into a divider and overturned on the Mumbai-Bengaluru highway in Satara district of western Maharashtra in the early hours of Tuesday.
The mishap took place at around 4.30 am when the mini truck (KA-37/6037) was negotiating a “S” curve in the Khambatki ghat section. The driver lost control of his truck and hit the road divider, resulting in the over-turning of the vehicle.
Those killed and the injured were among the 35 labourers and their family members who were travelling from Tikota village in Bijapur district of Karnataka. They were going to a construction site at Shirwal industrial estate in Satara district.They were carrying equipment and tools used for construction and when the truck toppled. When the vehicle overturned, the equipment and tools fell on them, with many of the getting injured in the process.
“Prima facie we have a reason to believe that the truck driver might have dozed off while negotiating the ghat section.
This might have resulted in his losing control of the vehicle and ramming into the road divider which led to the vehicle turning turtle,” Satara’s District Superintendent of Police Sandeep Patil said.
The injured are undergoing treatment at the Satara district civil hospital, where the condition of a few labourers was said to be “critical”.
Khambatki Ghat is a mountain pass in Satara district on Mumbai-Bengaluru national highway (which was earlier known as NH04 but now numbered as NH-48). This stretch of the ghat is treacherous for the vehicle drivers.
Tuesday’s was the second major mishap witnessed in Khambatki Ghat in recent years. Earlier on February 3, 2014, 10 people from Porbandar in Gujarat, including seven women, were killed and 39 were injured when the private bus they were travelling in went off the Pune-Bangalore highway and fell into a ravine. like in Tuesday, the bus driver had control of the vehicle on a slope of the ghat, leading to the mishap.
Earlier in mid January 2014, nine persons had been killed when a heavy container truck had crushed a tempo at the same spot.