Road accident victims’ kin trace culprits

Bhopal: At her age, Nandini Kahre will not be found eligible even to portray the role of a cop on stage. But, like a real-life Sherlock Holmes, the 10-year-old girl gathered clues, leading her to track down the vehicle that killed her brother, Avinash Kahre, 19, in a hit-and-run case, leaving the police in Bhopal red-faced.

In another case, a Madhya Pradesh housewife spent two years on her personal investigation and gathered evidence to help police seize a vehicle that killed her son in the city. She had launched a probe into the hit-and-run case on her own when police failed to trace the offending vehicle.

This trend of victims’ kin deciding to launch their own investigation into fatal accidents reflects the frustration among people due to unhelpful police, says a sociologist.

Nandini recalled the hardship her family faced after her brother’s accident.

“My family was devastated by the tragic death of my brother in a road accident here on September 30. We wanted the police to bring to book the culprit, but the police was indifferent. Police was clueless about the killer vehicle even a fortnight after the incident. Hence, I decided to visit the accident site to look for clues,” recalled Nandini.

Her brother, a Class 12 student, was hit by a car when he was returning home on his bike on September 30.

According to her, a scrutiny of the accident site on October 13 led to recovery of a tiny piece of plastic which appeared to have fallen off the offending vehicle’s broken tail lamp. A marking on the plastic piece helped her identify the brand of the car allegedly involved in her brother’s the hit-and-run case.

Then began her visits to showrooms selling that particular car brand in Bhopal and some workshops. Luck favoured her, when she accidentally found a vehicle, with a broken tail lamp, parked outside a show room-cum-workshop. The plastic piece collected from the accident site fitted perfectly in the broken space in the tail lamp, confirming her suspicion about the involvement of the vehicle in the fatal incident.

She took pictures of the car and alerted the police about her find. The police later seized the car and launched a probe into the matter that was as good as shut after their own investigation, which showed involvement of an “unidentified speeding vehicle” in the incident.

“A 10-year-old girl could locate the vehicle involved in the accident within two days. But, the police had failed to make any headway even in a fortnight,” said a relative of Nandini.

“We were even warned not to interfere in police working when we alerted the police after tracing the offending vehicle,” said one of  her relatives, refusing to be identified for fear of harassment by the police. Nandini’s father, Krishna Kumar Kahre, works in the Bhopal Municipal Corporation.

Nandini’s family is not the only one to have pushed the police into action.

Another accident victim’s family helped police seize an offending vehicle in a hit-and-run case after digging out CCTV footage and locating the vehicle, which was dismissed as “unidentified” by cops.

Kismat Maurya, 46, a homemaker and post-graduate in computer science, helped unravel the mystery behind the hit-and-run death of her son Aditya on October 22, 2015. The engineering student was taking a stroll when a speeding car mowed him down on a footpath.

Over the next two years, Ms Maurya fought odds and collected evidence by visiting the accident site and interacting with witnesses, forcing the police to consider a possible angle of homicide instead of a “untraced” hit-and-run case.

“The police had almost closed the case as an accident death. I gathered evidence to establish that it was not an accident death, forcing the police to reopen the case,” said Ms Maurya.

Incidentally, no arrest has been made in the case even two years after the incident.

“The investigation is still on into the case,” the police informed her in a letter written to her last week.

As part of her efforts to help police trace the culprit, Ms Maurya made a 14-second animated clip to recreate the accident to establish that it was a deliberate attempt to harm her son and not a mere accident.

S.N. Choudhury, professor and head of the department, sociology, Barkhatullah University, said the two cases reflect poorly on police.

“Both the cases show frustration among the people over the lackadaisical attitude and indifference of police to ensure justice,” he said.

These clearly indicate a gradual erosion of public faith in the system. Women and girls being the first and immediate victim of a mishap in the family are leading the battle for justice, said Mr Choudhury.

Police is overburdened with VIP duties and lacks manpower, forcing it to give low priority to hit-and-run case that require scientific methods of investigation, he said.

Hence, a tendency to look for an alternative in the community policing, prevalent in pre-British era in the country, is slowly developing in the society, he said.