The two-lane bridge over the Surya River (also called Surya River Charoti bridge) on the Mumbai–Ahmedabad highway, where former head of Tata Sons Cyrus Mistry died on Sunday, is not an accident-prone site and also does not feature in the list of “black spots” where fatal accidents have taken place before, police said.
The spot is situated near Charoti village in Kasa tehsil in Palghar.
Around the time of the accident, Mistry’s vehicle was coming from Ahmedabad side of the highway towards Mumbai. As the vehicle reached Charoti village, it took the Kasa flyover which is just a few hundred meters from the Surya River bridge.
Getting down the Kasa flyover leads one to a three-lane road. However, while approaching the Surya river bridge, within a 50-80 meters distance, there is a curve which narrows down from a three-lane road to two lane.
Notably, there are two Surya River bridges, one of which is a service road on left side and the other on the right side where the accident took place.
Police said when Mistry’s car crossed the flyover to go towards Mumbai, the vehicle was on the left side and was speeding.
When it reached the bridge on the Surya river, where the road narrows from three lanes to two lanes, the car – in its attempt to move to the right side of the lane – rammed into the boundary wall or railing of the bridge after veering out of control, police said.
The police claimed that the spot is not accident-prone.
“We checked the earlier accidents records but none had taken place on the spot where this one happened. It looks like the car was speeding and there was an error in the judgment of the driver while taking the bridge. Since the road narrowed to two lanes from three, the driver could not shift from left to right and lost control of the wheel and rammed into the divider,” said a police officer. Police said that two witnesses, a motorist and a garage mechanic, have told as much to the cops.
A local resident, Salim Shaikh, said it is the first time that such accident has taken place on the spot. “Even though no accident has taken place at the spot, the bottleneck that forms here while taking the bridge results in heavy traffic on the highway,” Shaikh added.
Police said they are awaiting reports from Forensic Science Laboratory, Regional Transport Office (RTO) and Mercedes company to ascertain if there was any mechanical or technical glitch in the car.
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“We will carry out technical analysis with the help of CCTV footage from toll plaza as well as Mercedes car technical team. There’s a chip in the car which maintains a record if there is any issue with the vehicle. This is similar to the black box which is deployed in flights. We will ask the automobile company to come and check this chip’s data which would help us arrive to a conclusion about the speed of the car and other checking parameters,” said an official.
He added that Palghar police, FSL, Toll plaza and RTO team are working jointly on the case. “Prima facie, it appears that over-speeding and error in judgment led to the accident,” the official said.