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,...
Five deaths in two major fatal accidents on Shaheed Gowari and Sakkardara fly-over within a fortnight raises a question mark on traffic management and safety measures on these bridges. Lane cutting, overtaking, overspeeding, using mobile while driving are regular rule violations on the city over-bridges by negligent drivers. In fact, the deterrent of law is the main factor as violators are going scot free even after snuffing out lives. In the past eight months, 13 persons were killed and 18 injured seriously in various accidents reported on fly-overs in the city, according to data compiled by traffic police. A police official privy to the investigations of the two fatalities said that two things were common in recent these two major accidents -- first thing was the vehicles were driven at great break-neck speed and second was the height of the parapet wall, it was not enough to save the bike riders falling from the bridge. In the Sakkardara bridge case, the negligent car dri...