4 of family drown at Narsinghpur
Four members of a family from Yerwada, including a teenaged boy, were drowned in the Sangam of the Neera and Bhima rivers at the pilgrim centre of Narsinghpur in Indapur taluka on Monday afternoon.The members of the Kulkarni family had gone to offer worship to their family deity Nrusinha when the incident took place, Indapur police said.
The bodies of the four devotees including Prakash Bhalchandra Kulkarni (28), his brothers Dilip (30) and Kiran (42) and Kiram's son Sagar (17) were fished out by the fire brigade personnel summoned from the nearby Malinagar and Akluj towns this afternoon.
The bodies of the Kulkarnis' were handed over to their relatives in the evening after postmortems were performed on them at the civil hospital at Indapur. They were cremated at Narsinghpur late in the evening.
Ten members of the Kulkarni family had gone to Narsinghpur on Monday morning. They were having bath at the angam when Prakash, Dilip, Kiran and Sagar drowned.
Police said the Sangam has been identified as a dangerous spot as atleast two to three persons drown there every year. Water flows with high velocity while the depth of the river bed is more, they added.
To facilitate the devotees, stone steps have been built on the river banks. Boards requesting the devotees not to enter in the deep water have also been put up.
Four killed as truck rams tree
Four persons were killed on the spot and six seriously injured when a Tuljapur-bound truck rammed into a tree located along the Pune-Solapur highway at Kurkumbh village near Daund late Monday night.
The identities of the two deceased were ascertained as Narayan Shejar (65) and his son Babaji (30). The identities of the two other deceased, a man aged about 35 years and a woman, could not be ascertained till late Tuesday evening.
Portrait row continues
Congressmen on Tuesday lodged a strong protest against the removal of the portrait of their leader Sharad Pawar from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) standing committee chairman's office with the party members wearing black badges during the panel meeting.
Not satisfied by this method of protest, the party nominees on the standing committee further issued an appeal to the Pimpri-Chinchwad Mayor Hanumanta Bhosale, urging him to remove the portrait of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray from his office.
The Congressmen were peeved at Sena's standing committee chairman Ramesh Bodke for removal of Pawar's portrait from his office on Monday. They were further incensed on realising that even the portrait of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been discarded by Bodke.
