Mangaluru, February 28: Protest was staged at Nanthoor junction after few hours elapsed post the terrible serial accident at Nanthoor which claimed the lives of three.
Relatives of Preetham Pinto who died in the mishap, accompanied by locals and a few community leaders staged a protest at the accident spot.
Preetham Pinto (21), Veena (40) and her daughter Nitisha (13) died after a tipper reportedly suffered brake failure and rammed into an electricity pole near Nanthoor circle, post which it collided to an Alto car, which in turn dashed to Preetham’s bike. The accident took place on the evening of Friday February 27th.
A few hours post Preetham expired, his cousin, said to be member of the Konkani Sahitya Academy, along with Academy president Roy Castelino and others gathered near Nanthoor junction to protest.
They said that although several accidents had taken place at Nanthoor junction, the authorities had failed to initiate appropriate measures to fix the problem. There are no proper signal or enough police personnel to monitor the traffic at this junction, they said. They urged to arrest the lorry driver soon and punish him strictly. They also demanded that the DCP visit the spot and denied to end the protest without meeting him.
Traffic was blocked for some time.
The Kadri cops arrived at the spot. They tried to convince the protestors, which was not fruitful.
As the situation appeared to go out of control, KSRP squad was put into action and the police had to resort to mild lathi charge to scatter the crowd, post which the protest ended.
Kadri inspector T D Nagaraj, speaking to the media, said although the demands of the protestors were right and they had the right to protest. But since the crowd caused inconvenience to the public by blocking the traffic, the police action was inevitable.
