Villagers pull out truck driver’s body from Kasara ghat nullah amid rain, total darkness

Villagers from in and around Kasara Ghat near Igatpuri helped pull out the body of a truck driver stuck in the middle of a 40 feet nullah after more than five hours of rescue operation amid thick fog, heavy rain and total darkness

For more than five hours before dawn on Thursday, amid thick fog, heavy rain and total darkness, villagers from in and around Kasara Ghat near Igatpuri helped pull out the body of a truck driver stuck in the middle of a 40 feet nullah.

The truck that fell in the Kasara ghat nullah. Villagers took more than five hours to pull the body of the driver (HT PHOTO)

Five villagers and several officials were also injured in this rescue operation. The villagers claim that the burden of working in such difficult conditions is due to the lack of disaster management and rescue equipment for the ghat section.

More than 220 people from different villages of Kasara are trained to handle accidents, natural calamity or any other emergency even before help from the authorities reaches them. On Wednesday night, they got a call from police officials informing them about a multi-axle trailer containing more than 200 iron rods falling off the road into the nullah. Due to lack of visibility on the ghat at night, the truck driver could not see a retaining wall of the road. He rammed into it and toppled into the nullah with all rods falling on him.

Shyam Dhumal, a villager and rescue team head, said, “We reached the spot at around 12 midnight but the visibility was low due to the fog. We wanted to save people who were stuck under the rods. Therefore, we made a human chain with police officials and decided to pull out all the iron rods first. Till around 2.30am we were only removing the rods. We desperately needed a crane or an excavator to speed track the process as doing it manually took more than three-and-a-half hours.”

He added that the rods were so sharp that some of them suffered injuries. “We continued to work for more than three hours despite heavy rain and low visibility after which a JCB arrived and removed the remaining rods. We pulled out the driver. However, it was already late by then. He was taken to a hospital. We also had to go to the hospital to treat our injuries. All our clothes were torn and some of us were bleeding.”

He said that had there been at least one basic rescue equipment, this would not have happened.

Police Inspector of highway police, Amol Walzade said, “The accident happened around 11.30pm and we could remove the driver’s body around 5am. Villagers helped us a lot to do the same in low visibility, rainy and foggy environment.”