HYDERABAD: B Balakrishna waited patiently before the Osmania General Hospital (OGH) mortuary on Wednesday for the post-mortem examination results of his 12-year-old daughter Madhushalini, who died in a bike accident earlier in the morning. The family was getting ready to visit their native at Abdullapurmet from Kothapet for a private family function when a college bus belonging to St Mary’s Group of Institutions, knocked down the bike crushing her head.
Madhushalini, affectionately called Pandu, was the first girl born into her paternal side after decades. “She was the first girl to be born and was everyone’s darling. There is nothing left of her face now, the bus tyre went over her face,” says B Krishnan, a relative. The emotionally devastated father was surrounded by friends and relatives. Ask him anything related to his now deceased daughter and he responds with a repetitive head nod.
The father of two girls, who works at Begum Bazaar, got to know about the accident from his younger brother, B Venkatesh who was riding the bike at the time of the accident. An equally drained Venkatesh sat a little away from his brother. They don’t meet eye-to-eye anymore. “Everyone said they we will take a bus but it was I who insisted that Pandu and I will take the bike,” says Venkatesh.
“Pandu wanted to reach before everyone so as to play with her friends that’s why she hopped on the bike. We were going to a family function now it has become a funeral” says Krishna.
‘Implement helmet rule’
With two back-to-back fatal accidents involving school children, the call for rules mandating helmets for pillion riders has gained momentum. Only cities like Kochi, Bengaluru, Puducherry and Chennai have made it mandatory for pillion riders to wear helmets. For Telangana, there are no such rules. “The life of pillion rider is important too, but the problem here is the enforcement,” said M Vinod Kanumula, chief functionary of the Indian Federation of Road Safety. “The push for making helmets mandatory for pillion riders in the city is not making much headway,” he added. “We first need to enforce bike riders to wear helmets,” said Ramesh Naidu, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic, Rachakonda.