The mystery shrouding the disappearance of four advertising professionals from Pune ended on Thursday, as the police recovered three remaining bodies and the car, in which they were travelling, from the bed of Neera river along the highway to Bangalore.
A day after the Pune police fished out the body of Chintan Buch (28) from the Neera river, 40 kms from Pune, divers of the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) pulled out the silver Hyundai i20 — containing the three missing advertising professionals — from the bed of river flowing under the Sarola bridge, located on the Mumbai-Bangalore National Highway 4.
The three advertising executives, whose bodies were recovered from the car that was fished out of the river bridge, were identified as Pranav lele (29), Sahil Quereshi (28) and Shrutika Chandwani (27). The three bodies were sent to a nearby hospital at Bhor for a post-mortem.
The four deceased professionals used to work for a communication and marketing firm at Kothurd in Pune. Buch hailed from Vadodara in Gujarat, while Quereshi from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. The two used to share an apartment with lele at Baner in Pune. The Hyundai belonged to lele.
While Buch, Quereshi and lele had set off on a vacation from Pune to Goa in their car at 11 pm on November 1, their colleague Shrutika had accompanied them as they were scheduled to drop her en route to Goa at Kolhapur. However, all the four went mysteriously missing.
The investigations by the police have now clearly established that the car — in which the four advertising professionals had departed from Pune on the night of November 1 — might have overshot the parapet of the bridge and plunged into the Neera river.
Buch — whose body was recovered on Wednesday at least 20-feet away from the spot where the car, in which his colleagues were found dead, was fished out — was reportedly sitting next to the window of the four-wheeler, when it went down the river. He might have exited from the widow and met the watery grave, after failing to swim ashore.
The footage of the CCTVs installed at the Khed-Shivapur toll plaza, which they passed at around 2.30 am on November 1, has shown that the car was speeding, before it approached the nearby Sarola bridge.
Shrutika’s phone signal was traced till a few kms the car had passed the Khed-Shivapur toll plaza. However, all the phones were found switched off later.
Police said that lele, who owned the car and was reportedly behind the wheel, might have been misled by a “work in progress” diversion board installed by the State Public Works Department (PWD) near in the bridge. The diversion board should be seen in the light of the fact that no work is currently in progress near the bridge.
There are two identical bridges over the Neera river, where the mishap took place.
“The car overshot one of the bridges and fell into the gap dividing the second bridge. Given that the car was negotiating the bridge around 2.45 am, there is every possibility of the vehicle driver having been misled by diversion board especially due to poor light. As a result, the
vehicle driver might have overshot the parapet and fallen into the river,” a police official said.