A Basanti Highway accident in the Bayarmari area on Wednesday afternoon killed two toto passengers and injured two others after a Scorpio collided with a toto before falling into a roadside waterbody, according to a report by Bartaman Patrika. The vehicle was associated with former Sandeshkhali MLA Sukumar Mahat, who was not inside it when the crash occurred.
The two deceased passengers were taken to Minakhan Hospital after the collision, where doctors declared them dead. Both were residents of the Bhangar area in South 24 Parganas, the report said. The two injured people were initially admitted to Minakhan Rural Hospital and were later shifted to a government hospital in Kolkata for further treatment.
The crash took place near Bayarmari on the Basanti Highway. After striking the toto, the Scorpio reportedly lost control and fell into a waterbody beside the road. Police from the Rajbari outpost under Nazat police station reached the scene after receiving information about the incident and helped with the rescue operation, according to the report.
Mahat told Bartaman Patrika that he had asked the driver to bring the vehicle because he needed to visit a doctor. He also said that the crash followed a race between two totos. That account is a statement attributed to the former MLA; the report does not provide an independent account of the sequence or a police finding on the cause of the collision.
The incident has drawn attention to the safety risks faced by passengers using totos and other small vehicles on busy highway corridors. The report does not specify the speed of the vehicles, the road conditions, whether any traffic rules were violated, or whether investigators have determined how the collision occurred on the wide stretch of road.
The deaths also underline the consequences of crashes involving mixed traffic, where slow-moving local transport shares road space with larger vehicles. Totos are widely used for short-distance travel in parts of South 24 Parganas, connecting settlements with markets, hospitals and larger transport routes. In such settings, the safety of passengers depends not only on driver behaviour but also on lane discipline, traffic enforcement, roadside protection and the management of merging and overtaking movements.
The injured passengers remained under medical care after being shifted to Kolkata, while the deceased were taken to hospital following the crash. Further details about the police investigation, the identities of the victims and any action against the driver were not available in the supplied report.
