An elderly bank employee and a schoolboy died in two separate road accidents on Tuesday, both of which could have been avoided if commuters had obeyed basic road rules.
Anima Bodra, 58, an employee of Bank of Baroda, Ratu Road branch, died around 10am in front of the radio station in Ratu Road area. Some hours later around 2.30pm, a Class VI student of YMCA Public School, Aditya Pathak, 13, died near Ghosh Petrol Pump in Kantatoli.
Namkum, Loadih resident Anima, riding pillion on husband Ajit’s scooter, was first knocked off by a motorcycle ramming into them from the wrong side of the road and run over by a truck of Ranchi Municipal Corporation that was going towards Piska Mor.
Kantatoli boy Aditya, who was riding a scooter at age 13 without wearing a helmet, died when he skidded while speeding and one of the wheels of a schoolbus he was trying to overtake hit him on the head.
A colleague of Anima, Anil Singh, said the lady usually came on the scooter of her husband Ajit, a retired employee of Union Bank of India. “By a stroke of fate, Mr Bodra escaped with minor injuries but his wife was crushed to death,” the colleague said, adding they were all in shock.
About Aditya, an eye-witness told this paper that it was shocking to watch.
“First of all, the boy was too young to ride a scooter. Then, he was without a helmet and speeding on the left side of the road,” he said. “It was extremely tragic. But he tried to overtake a bus of Bishop Westcott Boys’ School, Namkum, and fell off his vehicle. In a flash of a second, one of the wheels of the bus hit him.”
A neighbour said the boy was on his way to fetch his younger brother, Ashish, from the same school, YMCA. The neighbour added that his parents were both working and divorced, and that the boy’s mother, Lakhi Pathak, was often told that the teenager would ride his scooter very fast.
A school official said the boy was absent for the last three days due to fever and had also not attended classes on Tuesday.
“He was an average student. He had habit of coming to school on a scooter. School principal Sadhana Singh had alerted his mother twice about this. He was too young to ride a scooter,” the school staff said.
Contacted, city SP Hari Lal Chouhan, who also holds the additional charge of traffic SP, called both the accidents extremely unfortunate and said his department would take steps to stop such mishaps from recurring.
“We have decided to intercept the teenage boys riding two-wheelers without helmets. Their parents have to be informed and it’s the parents who must ensure that underage children cannot access two-wheelers,” Chouhan said.
This apart, we will alert police to pay proper attention to incidents of overtaking from the wrong side of the road,” he said.
But people are not convinced. Anima’s colleague Naresh Kumar, an official of Bank of Baroda, Ratu Road, called such statements an eyewash. “The number of traffic police personnel in Ranchi is too few in number to enforce traffic rules. Violations happen right under their noses but they (traffic cops) let them pass,” he said.