Overview
- The family’s vehicle, which plunged into a water-filled roadside well around 10 pm Friday in Dindori near Nashik, left nine dead including six children.
- Rescuers used two cranes and local swimmers to pull out the submerged multi-utility vehicle after midnight, but doctors declared all nine brought dead at a government hospital.
- Police registered cases under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, India’s new penal code, naming well owner Rajendra Raje for failing to secure the site and the deceased driver for alleged negligent driving.
- Raje is untraceable according to police, and a committee is examining how a concrete road was approved to end at the open well, with officials who cleared the project set to be added as accused.
- Authorities have filled the well and put up barricades, the chief minister announced Rs 5 lakh compensation per victim, and residents say the long-known hazard worsened after nearby farmland turned residential and the well’s low wall went unchecked.