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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

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  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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Khapri RoB a threat for life

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Narrow Railway Over Bridge and huge traffic movement.


Traffic cops managing congested traffic on Wardha raod near Chinchabhuvan. 


By Dheeraj Fartode

Square peg in round holes, fits the thinking pattern of Indian planners. Projects get executed without giving thought about the safety and usability from point of view of the people who are going to use it. An example of Khapri railway overbridge (RoB) would suffice to describe the situation that confronts its users.
Constructed just 15-years back, the RoB is now listed as great risk for its users. During the night time chances of meeting with an accident are quite high. The reason, approach road on either side of the RoB opens onto wide space while RoB itself is wide enough for two lanes. Therefore vehicles zoom in at high speed coming from four laned highway from Wardha side and also from Sonegaon end but the speeding vehicles gets stagnated as the RoB width is of two lanes only.
Therefore while planning for the RoB, the planners should have thought of increasing road traffic in future and went into for four laned that would have avoided the pitfalls that users face today. Khapri RoB stands reduced to a bottleneck for traffic movement defeating the very purpose for it was built. During the past two years the faulty design of RoB and its approach road has resulted in 11 death in ghastly mishap.
Apart from short width of RoB, towards the Sonegaon end the approach road gets into a curve and during night time the headlight of descending vehicle tends to put approaching vehicle driver in total blindness causing accident most of the times.
The RoB provides vital link between Nagpur-Wardha, Nagpur-Chandrapur and Nagpur-Hyderabad but throughout the day the movement of traffic is chaotic. Towards night if one wants to negotiates the RoB, then it is quite a risky affair. Traffic snarls are order of the day at the Khapri RoB.
Police Inspector of Traffic Control Branch (South) Avinash More said that around 10 fatal accident have occurred on the stretch of Khapri RoB and 11 persons lost their lives. All mishaps occurred during the night hours. The Traffic Control Branch has now deployed two traffic cops on Chinchbhuvan end of the RoB, PI More added.
As vehicle numbers plying between Nagpur and other cities is increasing every year the need for widening the Khapri RoB is being felt very badly. The other factors responsible for increase in traffic movement is increasing residential area at Chinchbhuvan, starting of three engineering colleges near Chinchabhuvan and Butibori area and industrial developments of MIHAN. Thus hundreds of bike-borne youths travel through the RoB every day to their colleges. And negotiating this RoB is a matter of extreme caution as even a slight deflection of gaze can be a sure invitation for a trouble.
However one major reason for mishap is throwing to wind the road safety rules. The approach road from Sonegaon end is also faulty as there is a huge gap as the road winds upto to middle of RoB and most of the time drivers were known to have lost control while negotiating the downward curve. Blinkers are not properly installed by the road side to indicate the boundary of the road.
Though two speed breakers were constructed at either end of RoB to put brakes on the speeding driver but the move is half hearted as radium strips are not pasted in uniform pattern which results in miscalculation on part of approaching vehicle drivers.


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