Shrivatsa Rathi WhatsApped an Instagram video to a cousin at 2.58am on Monday. In less than four minutes, he was killed along with his father and grandmother in a crash on VIP Road.
A bus that had allegedly been stolen from its garage and was speeding to escape a police squad on the trail smashed the car from behind at a red light at the Lake Town Clock Tower crossing.
Rishi Kothari, who was in another car and returning home to Beleghata, was the last person whom Shrivatsa had communicated with. He had sent a video from Instagram, Rishi’s elder brother Ritesh told The Telegraph on Tuesday.
The car in which Shrivatsa was travelling with his father Shivshankar and grandmother Kamala was smashed into a mangled mass.
Ritesh, who was about 5 minutes behind the Rathis in another car, said his car, too, could have been hit by the same bus. It missed his car by a whisker.
Seconds later, he crossed the accident spot. He realised that something had happened, but drove on. Much later, he came to know that his relatives were lying dead inside the wreckage.
Ritesh was heading for his Behghata home with his father, his wife and a domestic help in their Renault KWID.
“My car was in the middle lane. I was talking to my younger brother Rishi over the speaker. I told him to avoid the road along SubhasSarovar. Suddenly a bus crossed me from the right at a very high speed,” Riteshsaid.
The bus zig-zagged in front of his car before vanishing out of sight. “A few minutes later, my car hit something on the road. It was a number plate and an iron object that had come off some vehicle. I had to slow down. I saw glass shards on the road and thought there must have been an accident,” Ritesh said.
Barely a few hundred metres from there, Ritesh saw the same bus had crashed into a truck. The number plate that had hit his car belonged to the bus, he presumed. “This time I stopped the car and told a few police officers who were there that my car was about to be hit by this bus. Then I left the spot without realising that my own family members were lying at the accident site,” he said.
Much later, he learned from Rishi that almost at the same time when they were talking over the phone and discussing the route, Shrivatsa had sent Rishi a video, the last-ever message from their 23-year-old cousin.
Several family members lamented that had the police stopped the bus before, the accident could have been averted and the Rathis would have been alive.
The police on Tuesday said they did chase the bus, but could not match its speed.
Forensic experts inspected the accident site and the bus on Tuesday.
Sources said the accused bus driver, Faijullah Gazi, who is in judicial remand, had allegedly stolen a motorcycle in January and was arrested.
Another relative of the Rathis, Kaushal Dujari, who lives on Bangur Avenue, not far from the accident site, said he heard “two loud crashes” in quick succession around 3am, just when he was entering his home.
“I thought it was a tyre burst. Almost an hour later, Sarala aunty (Shivshankar Rathi’s wife) called to say uncle had an accident andthat I should rush to the hospital,” Dujari told this newspaper.