Grief Engulfs Asgaon After Ambenali Tragedy: Four pyres lit at once in village of 400

Kolhapur: In the early hours of Tuesday, a tiny Satara village of under 400 people mourned as four childhood friends were cremated together, their pyres lit side by side in a haunting farewell.

Eight men, including seven friends and a driver, had died after their vehicle veered off the treacherous Ambenali ghat stretch, between Poladpur in Raigad and Pratapgad fort in Satara, on Sunday, and plunged 1,500 feet into a gorge. Among them, four young men were from Asgaon, a settlement barely 12km from Satara city, magnifying the loss in a village where almost every household knew them.

Ritesh Lokhande, who dreamt of becoming a cop, 20-year-old Suhas Lokhande, chasing a name in the reel industry, Mahesh Pawar (25), already working behind the camera in Marathi serials and aspiring to be a director of photography, and Aditya Salunkhe, a junior college student who wanted to be a doctor, had all gone on a weekend trip to the Dapoli beach in Ratnagiri on Friday. The accident took place on they way back home.

“For every function, they used to come together. During the wedding of Aditya’s sister a few weeks ago, they had come together,” said a villager.

That memory hung heavy as their bodies reached Asgaon around 12.30am. The entire village waited in silence for one last glimpse. At the public crematorium, family members performed the final rites, lighting all four pyres at the same time.

Elsewhere, the other victims were also laid to rest through the night. Ansh Chavan, who hailed from Ratnagiri district and hoped to become a businessman, was taken to his native village for cremation. Kiran and Nikhil Shingate were cremated in Mardhe village in Satara.

Driver Sandip Katkar from Khatav, whose body was recovered last at 10.30 pm on Monday, was cremated after his postmortem ended at 1.30am.

The group had left for a weekend trip on Friday night, reaching Dapoli in Ratnagiri by Saturday morning. They began their return journey the same night, but between 2.30am and 5am on Sunday, their SUV met with a fatal accident. It took nearly 18 hours to trace the wreckage using mobile location tracking.

Around 100 volunteers toiled 24 hours

Around 100 volunteers from Pratapgad Search and Rescue, Mahakaleshwar Trekkers, Roha’s Sahyadri trekkers and other groups worked nearly 24 hours without rest or adequate food to first locate the crash site, then trace the bodies, and finally retrieve them from the treacherous terrain marked by steep slopes, overhanging cliffs and dense vegetation.

“It wasn’t an easy task. The location was remote, inhabitable, challenging topography,” said a volunteer.

Even as rescue efforts ended, commuters flagged the lack of safety measures at the spot — a sloping stretch with a right turn and a valley on the left — where the SUV is believed to have overshot the turn and plunged after hitting a mound of soil.

“The driver might have misjudged, and instead of taking a right turn, he went further. And moving over the mound of soil, the vehicle went down into the valley. The road is wide, and there are direction boards. One of the boards showing a right turn was hit by the SUV before it plunged into the valley. There is a signboard showing an accident-prone area as well,” said Anand Rohidas Rawade, assistant inspector of the Poladpur police station in Raigad.