Vengeful bus driver started fire that claimed lives of four employees of Pune firm: Cops
Pune, Mar 20 (PTI): The fire on a private firm’s minibus that killed four employees near Pune was allegedly an act of sabotage by a vengeful driver who had a dispute with some staffers and was also upset over a pay cut, police said on Thursday.
"Investigation revealed that the fire was not an accident but sabotage," deputy commissioner of police Vishal Gaikwad of Pimpri Chinchwad Police told PTI Videos.
Janardan Hambardekar, the accused driver, had a dispute with some of the employees and wanted to take revenge, the official said. The driver was also disgruntled due to a salary cut, he said.
The employees against whom he held a grudge were not among the deceased four, the DCP said.
The incident took place in the Hinjawadi area near Pune city on Wednesday morning as the bus, owned by Vyoma Graphics and carrying 14 of its employees to the workplace, caught fire.
"The accused had procured benzene (a highly inflammable chemical). He had also kept a cloth used to wipe toners in the bus. On Thursday, as the bus neared Hinjawadi, he lit a match and set the cloth on fire," said the DCP.
The accused jumped off the moving bus, which then continued about a hundred metres before coming to a halt, the official said. Hambardekar had already suffered burns before he got out, as per the probe.
The driver was undergoing treatment at a hospital and will be arrested later, the police official said.
Four of the employees – Shankar Shinde (63), Rajan Chavan (42), Gurudas Lokare (45) and Subhash Bhosale (44) – died as they were sitting in the rear and could not open the emergency exit door in time. Besides, six passengers sustained burn injuries.
Further probe was on, the DCP added.
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
