Prof injured as car falls into pit near Gurgaon’s Galleria market

Gurgaon: A professor driving home from work suffered multiple injuries after her car slipped into an uncovered pit dug up by GMDA on Hamilton Road, near Galleria Market, around 5pm on Saturday.Chitra Kaul, who teaches at Sushant University in Sector 55, was stuck inside for 15 minutes until passers-by rescued her. Recalling the horrifying incident, Kaul, who is in her 50s, said there was no safety signage in place and the road was muddy due to the rain, which caused her car to slip into the pit and overturn. She sustained several internal injuries to her neck, back, and stomach.“It suddenly went all dark after my car overturned. I could not breathe, and my screams for help went unattended for a few minutes.

Later, some people gathered and broke the rear glass of the car and pulled me out. Those were the scariest 15 minutes of my life,” she said.“It is a one-way traffic road, but a cyclist came in the opposite direction right in front of me, and in order to save him, I swerved right and fell into the ditch. As it rained a day before, the road was muddy, and my car slipped,” she added.Accusing civic authorities of negligence, Kaul said she called the police control room to file a complaint but was asked to contact the police station instead.

“I will lodge my complaint at Sector 29 police station on Wednesday against the authorities,” she said, adding that she went to her brother’s house in Noida after the accident as her husband was in Mumbai.Sector 29 SHO Ravi Kumar, however, said that no complaint had been received so far in connection with the incident. “If a complaint is received, necessary action will be taken,” he said.CCTV footage of the incident shared on social media shows the car veering off to the right and falling into the uncovered pit.Officials from the GMDA, however, claimed that work related to the development and connection of a drain was underway on the stretch. “Safety tapes and cones were installed as part of precautionary measures,” an official said. The Authority has since covered the pit.