Bengaluru: A young couple in Bengaluru, while riding their Honda Activa on the Devarabeesanahalli flyover, lost control while trying to avoid a pot hole, on Thursday night. While the rider, Om Prakash Tripathi, endured a fracture and bruises, his wife Stuthi Pandit Tripathi suffered brain haemorrhage and died in a hospital.
A case has been booked against her husband. “We have to investigate as to how the accident occurred, which is why we booked an accident case against him,” Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) M.A. Saleem said, defending the police’s decision.
‘Ridiculuous’ say netizens and Bengalureans. They say the civic bodies such as the BBMP and the BDA are responsible. “What a joke? Do the BDA or the police have any witnesses, CCTV footage that say the person was driving rashly? Will anybody drive into a pothole on their own?” said user Victor_K in a comment on the report of the incident published on the Deccan Herald website.
Dr K B Vijayakumar lashed out at the police: “Arresting the husband showed the foolishness and stupidity of the police. What else can you expect from a department that is No. 1 on the corruption index? The genius who invented this cause for the case will be given a word-bashing by the courts. That will be our day. We can garland the ‘genius’ that day.”
Another netizen posted: “Even rash drivers don’t like to jump into potholes for fun. Hope the corporation will look into maintaining roads instead of doing resort politics.”
Sreesh R Babu, an advertising consultant living in Ramaiah Layout in Guttahalli, was livid. “The high court has been giving directions to the BBMP and the BDA to fill potholes and submit a report to it. But nothing has been done so far. The police themselves are shameless in registering a case against the husband, who must be going through major trauma. A case should instead be registered against the BBMP,” he told Deccan Herald.
He said there are umpteen numbers of potholes in his own locality. “There are no proper roads at all. I feel scared to even take out my scooter,” he said.
On micro-blogging website Twitter, Nabin Patro commented with the hashtags #Potholes and #Bangalore: “Authorities needs to be sued, if any incident occurs at unsigned #potholes (sic)”. He also tagged Union?Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari in his post.
Other twitter posts
R V Shiva Kumar @ShivaKumar_RV 13h13 hours ago
are you seriously stating that the guy was responsible and not the BBMP, BDA for the potholes?
Venkat @hven84 Sep 19:
#BBMP filled up 25k potholes in Bangalore and 3k pending. Is the hal beml junction that has no road treated as one pothole? Cc: @bbmpadmn
Stephen Melvin @melvingunjal Sep 19:
Best way to find potholes in Bangalore.
Wait for someone to die cus of it.
Wait a day and let the news come in papers.
Call BBMP
According to reports in the media, the police didn’t find Om Prakash to be under the influence of alcohol. Presence of tyre marks on the 25 year old victim means she could have been run over by another vehicle as well. There’s CCTV recording too but the police is yet to investigate that, reports DNA. Reports in the media also say that the victim wasn’t wearing a helmet, and same was the case with the rider.
Passing the buck:
As usual, the authorities are passing the buck. The BBMP says that the incident at Devarabisanahalli, in fact, occurred in the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) jurisdiction.
“The pothole at Devarabisanahalli has been filled. For the past two weeks, the BBMP Commissioner has been holding meetings every Monday on the issue of potholes with all eight zones through video conferencing. We are doing better, but the weather and rains are hampering our progress,” said BBMP Commissioner Kumar G. Naik.
Compensation:
Compensation is rarely handed out in such cases. The concept of accepting responsibility is totally absent. “In a few cases, the medical treatment expenses were borne, but that was long ago,” a BBMP official said.
However, urban expert Ashwin Mahesh said there have been cases where the court of law has directed civic bodies to pay compensation. “They have to pay for the damages. It need not be a law that applies to civic bodies. There are other laws with provisions to ensure compensation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) M.A. Saleem said payment of compensation depended entirely on the investigations. “Once we complete investigations, we forward the report to the court. In accident cases, we have booked cases against engineers of civic bodies,” he said.
