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IN A horrifying tragedy caused allegedly by road contractors working on a drainage line to be laid perpendicular to a road in rural Kutch in Gujarat, three persons lost their lives after two vehicles, a car and two bikes, fell into the approximately 15-feet-long gap in the road on the night of May 9. Among those who lost their lives were a woman who had just given birth to her child at G K General Hospital in Bhuj. The child survived but lost its mother within hours of being born.
Public outcry and the lack of any sort of barricades or warning signs at the construction site led to the Kutch (West) Police filing an FIR on May 12, naming anonymous contractors as accused persons. The police have since written to the Roads and Buildings (R&B) department to identify the individuals responsible for this particular work.
The FIR was registered at Khavda police station on the basis of a complaint by 32-year-old Amad Ibrahim Sama, a resident of Madhapar, Bhuj, who was driving his family home with the young mother and newborn and lost two family members.
The FIR stated that Amad had left GK General Hospital at 6:30 pm on May 9 with his car, which was also carrying his mother-in-law Amiyat Latif Sama, father-in-law Latif Umar Sama, daughter Afseen, cousins Nurbai Juma Sama and Rehana Hakeem Sama, the last of whom had just delivered her child at the hospital.
They were on their way to Juna village which lies on the edge of the Rann of Kutch Lake which houses Khadir Bet island of Dholavira fame.
The FIR stated that they were travelling along the Daddhar-Sadhara road when the car suddenly fell into a large hole in the road. There had been no signboards, no diversion signs or barricades before the gap dug into the road to build the “nala” and the hole, he said, had not been visible in the night. There was only a pile of dirt, as high as a speed bump, put up before the wide gap in the road.
This stretch of road is in an extremely peripheral area of India and lies close to the international border with Pakistan. There are no streetlights on these internal roads, or even on the main road link – National Highway 341 – that goes from the major city of Bhuj towards Khavda and onto the India-Pakistan border.
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Amad Sama said that people from the nearby village noticed the accident and came running to help them and extracted them from the car. A short while later, an ambulance from the GVK-EMRI 108 arrived on site and took the injured to the Khavda Community Health Centre (CHC), from where they were referred to GK General Hospital in Bhuj, the very place they had started their journey earlier that evening.
While Amad Sama and his father-in-law Latif Umar Sama suffered bone fractures, his daughter Afseen suffered minor injuries. However, Nurbai Juma Sama and Rehana Hakeem Sama suffered previous head injuries and died during treatment. PSI MB Chavda said that Rehana’s newborn child survived the accident.
However, there were more fatalities outside the car. The FIR stated that at the same time as the car of the Sama family fell into the gap in the road, five men travelling on two bikes also fell into the same gap.
On one bike, while driver Umar Hasan Vandha suffered minor injuries, pillion rider Ibrahim Hussain Sama, suffered head injuries. Both are under treatment.
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On the other bike, while driver Juma Alu Kalar suffered previous head injuries, one pillion rider Mustafa suffered minor injuries while the second pillion rider, Rashid Sumar Kalar died of critical injuries.
The anonymous contractors were booked under BNS sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), as well as 125(a) and 125(b) (rash or negligent acts that endangers human life or safety).
PSI MB Chavda who has charge of Khavda police station, told The Indian Express, “The road was already there, but a 15-20 feet long gap of the road had been dug out for some drainage work. Two women from the car and one person on a bike have died at the spot. We have written to the R&B department for names of those individuals responsible for this work and are awaiting a reply.”
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