lAt least 19 people have been crushed to death after a girder-launching crane collapsed on Samruddhi Highway in the early morning of Tuesday. The crane was being used to build a bridge on the highway in Thane, Maharashtra.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of the victims of the accident. While the injured will be given Rs 50,000.
The two teams of the National Disaster Management Relief Force have recovered 15 bodies so far from the accident site. They also found three injured people who have been taken to the hospital for treatment.
Five persons are feared trapped and efforts are on to rescue them, reportedly an NDRF official told PTI.
Reports say that the people who got killed were mostly the workers who were engaged in construction work at that time.
Reportedly, the accident took place near Sarlambe village in Shahpur tehsil which is around 80 km from Mumbai.
The Samruddhi Mahamarg or the Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg, is a 701-km-long expressway connecting Mumbai and Nagpur. It traverses ten districts including Nagpur, Washim, Wardha, Ahmednagar, Buldhana, Aurangabad, Amravati, Jalna, Nashik, and Thane. The construction of the Samruddhi Mahamarg is being carried out by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation.
According to the reports, 100 people died due to accidents on the Samruddhi expressway.
This is a developing story. More details awaited.
