3-yr-old crushed by speeding car in building compound

A speeding car crushed a three-year-old girl, who was playing with friends in her Malad building compound, on Thursday evening.

A speeding car crushed a three-year-old girl, who was playing with friends in her Malad building compound, on Thursday evening.

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The police are looking for the driver of the Scorpio, 37-year-old Sujit Pratap

At 5pm, Anushka Jain was playing with friends on the premises of Aradhana building in Malad (West), when Pratap was getting the Scorpio out because his employer, businessman Boralal Jain, was to go out with his family.

“As Pratap was speeding, he could not control the vehicle when the girl came in the way and she got crushed under the wheels,” said a resident of the building, who did not wished to be named.

The other children, who were playing with Anushka, raised an alarm and building residents rushed to the compound to check what had happened.

Pratap, however, had fled without informing the authorities or providing medical aid to the three-year-old girl, the police said.

The locals rushed Anushka to a nearby hospital, but the doctors declared her declared dead on admission.

“A case of causing death due to rash and negligent driving has been registered against the driver, who is at large. He is a resident of Nallasopara,” said R Prabhu, senior inspector of the Malad police station.

When the incident took place, Anushka's father, Nilesh Jain, was at his Malad shop, while her mother was home tending to her three-month-old baby.

On November 28, Devyani Joshi, 42, a resident of Highland Park building in Mulund, had accidentally accelerated her car instead of applying the brakes and run over the 55-year-old watchman, Bapu Maheshankar, killing him.

Joshi was arrested the next day, and subsequently released in the day.