Feeding pigeons in the backyard of their small house was one activity little Sloke Jaiswara would look forward to, his father Sanjay said.
The pigeons returned for their daily dose of grains on Friday but Sloke was no longer around.
Eighteen-month-old Sloke had died in a crash a few metres from his home in Alipore on Wednesday night.
“Sloke would not miss feeding the pigeons. Today, he is not there. But we will continue to do what he started,” Sloke’s father Sanjay said on Friday afternoon.
Sanjay Jaiswara, who works in a private firm, said Sloke was their firstborn.
“I do not know what happened that night. Within a fraction of a second, everything changed. We were returning from a marriage ceremony. Everything was all right. We were just a few metres from our home. This trailer was right in front of us. Then suddenly, the trailer took a slight right turn, disbalancing my vehicle totally,” Jaiswara recalled.
“My wife Puja and I fell on the right side of the scooter. But Sloke fell on the left side,” Jaiswara said.
By the time the couple could collect themselves, the rear wheels of the trailer had smashed Sloke’s head.
“We screamed at the driver asking him to stop. He stopped a few metres away. But what purpose did it serve? My child was gone,” the bereaved father said.
The crash happened on Thackeray Road, not far from Presidency Correctional Home, around 11.35 on Wednesday night.
Jaiswara said he and his wife were “law-abiding” and like any other day, had their helmets on.
“But my child’s head was too small for a helmet,” he broke down as he spoke.
The police said the trailer driver was arrested on the spot.
The driver did not flee, an officer said. “He was taken to Alipore police station first and later handed to the fatal squad of the traffic police,” the officer said.
Driver Sanjay Kumar Rajak has been booked under IPC sections related to causing death due to negligence, rash and negligent driving and mischief.
The police said that according to their records, the trailer has three pending cases of traffic violations against it in the Kolkata police area.
Several people in the neighbourhood blamed a speed-breaker, set up at the bend of the road, for the accident. “Had the speed-breaker not been there, the scooter would not have faltered and crashed,” said a neighbour of the Jaiswaras.
The police said the speed-breaker was especially installed to ensure motorists do not speed along that sharp bend.
A senior officer of the traffic department said carrying an infant in the arms or between the rider and the pillion-rider is dangerous for the child because children cannot manoeuvre themselves with the changing speed of a vehicle and are prone to falling if there is a jerk or a crash.