Day after, Gmada accepts responsibility of airport road accident

Mohali: A day after a 19-year-old youth was killed and four others injured in an accident on the potholed airport road connecting Chandigarh and Mohali, the Gmada authorities admitted their fault.

When Gmada additional chief administrator Rajesh Dhiman was asked whether Gmada is responsible for the mishap as it was assigned the charge to look after the maintenance of the airport road he said, “Yes, it is a fault on Gmada’s part but I have joined Gmada this week only. We have prepared our team to repair the road. We will also find which contractor was involved in construction of this road.”

On Saturday, Nikhil Sharma, 19, a resident of Sector 35 was killed and his four friends Ayan Mahajan, Ananya, Sheen and Mannat injured when their car met with an accident on their way to their freshers’ party at

Chitkara

University in Banur. Their car flew up into the air, landed on the ground and flipped on the Airport road.

TOI had visited the airport-Landran-IT city road multiple times and reported about its dilapidated state multiple times. It brought to notice that the commuters were worried about fatal accidents that the condition of the road may result in but authorities ceased to pay attention.

It is pertinent to mention that the road is far from any kind of vigilance. There are no cops around, no ambulance or highway patrolling vehicle to help injured persons.

With no traffic zone, the car carrying Nikhil and his friends were going at a speed of around 80km per hour on Saturday.

Rajinder Singh, a motorcyclist and an eyewitness said, “I saw the accident, the speed of the car was not that high but kids were not aware of the massive bumps on the road that too at intervals of just 10 feet.”

The car thumped into a pothole and its bonet hit the ground first. Later, the car flew in the air and landed on the ground. Its rear axle broke and finally it flipped twice causing fatal injuries to the kids inside it.

After the accident, commuters halted to help the students but they failed to reach police and ambulance. Finally, a tempo driver took the students to the Mohali civil hospital, where Nikhil was declared brought dead.

On Sunday, Nikhil’s body was handed over to the family. Nikhil was a first year student of physiotherapy and was the elder son of Joginder Ram Sharma who is the principal of Chakwal National DAV Senior Secondary School in Kurali and Anjana Sharma who is an Ayurvedic doctor at Nalagarh.

This is the second accident in three days. On Thursday, a 24-year-old woman Amandeep Kaur was killed after being hit by a tipper near Airport Chowk.

Chitkara to press charges against Gmada

The Chitkara University officials will also be pressing charges of against Gmada as no one is seeing any fault of the students in the accident. A Chitkara University official said, “The speed of all vehicles on main highways or state highways is 80 km plus. It was the responsibility of Gmada to repair the road for public safety. The road contains over 100 big potholes and they are all visible. How and why did Gmada turn a blind eye to it?”

Investigation on after accident

Meanwhile, investigation officer of the case ASI Satnam Singh said, “We have initiated inquest proceedings under Section 174 of CrPC. The car of the kids had hit into a bump due to which this accident took place. We are investigating more things in this case.”