india

Updated: May 15, 2019 14:56 IST

A 37-year-old man was killed on Wednesday morning after his vehicle fell into a 15-feet deep pit dug up by the civic body for a sewer in Maharashtra’s Thane, officials said.

Sachin Kakodkar was returning home in his Ertiga late at night after meeting his friends when his vehicle fell into the pit as soon as he crossed Neelkanth Gardens towards Ghodbunder Road at Mullabaug.

When he did not return home till the morning, his wife traced him with the help of his vehicle’s global positioning system (GPS) and alerted the fire brigade around 6:15am.

The Thane Municipal Corporation had dug up the road for laying pipelines for a sewer. They had also put up wired barricades as a warning to motorists. Locals said Kakodkar must not have noticed the barricades as there were no reflectors near the pit.

The rescue operations took 45 minutes and a critically injured Kakodkar was rushed to Bethany Hospital, where he was declared dead there.

“We got a call from the fire brigade and immediately rescue vehicles were rushed to the spot. With the help of a crane, the vehicle was taken out of the pit. But we had to strategise and get necessary machinery in place which took some time,” chief of the Regional Disaster Management Cell (RDMC) Santosh Kadam said.

It was difficult for RDMC personnel to lift a four-wheeler out of the trench and it took 45 minutes to complete the rescue operations, officials said.

“The trench had barricades at both ends and it was connected with wires. If Kakodkar was driving at a speed he would have overshot the barricades easily and fell into the pit,” said a TMC official on condition of anonymity.