A three-year-old child died after he fell off an e-rickshaw that overturned when his grandfather, who was driving the vehicle, failed to negotiate a bumpy stretch near Andul Road in Howrah.
The child was returning from school and his mother was seated next to him on the e-rickshaw.
The child’s grandfather, Ganesh Malik, failed to control the e-rickshaw after it landed on a stretch of the road where the concrete layer had peeled off, leaving it bumpy, a police officer said.
“The child was returning from school with his mother in the morning. The grandfather was trying to take a right turn when the toto fell on that rough patch. The vehicle overturned,” said Sujata Adhikari, a resident of the area. “All three were injured. The child bled profusely.”
Battery-operated rickshaws are popularly called totos.
Residents of the area alerted the police and rushed the injured to hospital.
A doctor who treated the child at Howrah State General Hospital said he had suffered internal haemorrhage, too. “The grandfather fractured one of his legs,” the police said.
“A team of experts will conduct forensic tests to ascertain whether the vehicle was road-worthy.”
In Howrah, as in many other parts of the state, the majority of the e-rickshaws are illegal because their prototypes have not been cleared by government institutes working on vehicle safety, such as the Central Institute of Road Transport in Pune and the International Centre for Automotive Technology in Haryana, senior transport department officials said.
Introduced in 2014 by an amendment to the Motor Vehicles Act of 1980, this non-polluting mode of transport has remained largely unregulated in Kolkata and the districts.
Calcutta High Court has passed several orders since 2018 instructing the Bengal government to crack down on illegal e-rickshaws.
The government has shied away from executing the directive, buying time citing law and order issues.
What was intended to improve last-mile connectivity has now become a principal mode of transport on several thoroughfares across parts of Howrah and stretches adjoining Kolkata in North and South 24-Parganas.
Battery-operated rickshaws can be spotted on smaller roads in Kolkata, too. Pockets in the city such as Kasba, Bosepukur, Anandapur, Lake Town, Dum Dum and Salt Lake now have dedicated stands for these vehicles.
“One of the ways to tackle the challenge posed by illegal e-rickshaws is sealing the unauthorised units that assemble them. The district magistrates have been asked to crack down on such assembling units across blocks and sub-divisions,” transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty, had earlier told Metro.
In September, the state government had prohibited plying of unauthorised vehicles, including e-rickshaws and autos, on national and state highways as well as on important routes. But that hasn’t had much impact, several officials conceded.