Plywood Truck Drops Into Storm Drain After Slab Gives Way on Pataudi Road

GURUGRAM: A truck carrying plywood sank into a stormwater drain on Pataudi Road on Friday morning after the slab over the drain gave way near Radha Soami Satsang Ghar. The driver jumped clear. No one was hurt. The vehicle overturned with its wheels in the opening.

An MCG engineer said the stretch is part of a road the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation is to rebuild as a model corridor. “Such incidents have happened earlier too. They happen because of the heavy weight of these vehicles,” the engineer said.

Shopkeepers on the road said this was not the first cave-in on the same drain cover. They put the recent tally at three or four similar drops and asked the corporation to inspect the full length rather than patch one bay. After rain, they said, water sits against the slab edges and the ground under the cover softens.

Ajay Veer Singh, who runs a dhaba near the spot, said commuters were being put at risk. “Similar accidents have happened three to four times recently. The authorities must inspect the entire stretch and fix the problem permanently before a major accident claims someone’s life. The incident raises questions as to whether the structure was properly constructed to bear the load of vehicles,” he said.

Pataudi Road takes loaded trucks between the old city, the industrial pockets toward Pataudi and the Sohna side. Friday’s plywood carrier lodged in the opening instead of sliding fully in, which is why the driver could jump clear. The drain work on this reach was recently completed by MCG. HSIIDC’s model-road plan is the longer reconstruction still to come.

Shopkeepers have asked for that inspection in writing. MCG has not said how many panels it will replace, or whether it will divert trucks while it checks the rest of the lid. Until HSIIDC actually rebuilds the corridor, the corporation remains the agency that laid the cover and has to answer for it.

The cave-in sits in a fortnight when Gurugram has already seen a master-sewer collapse at IFFCO Chowk and a Sohna Road dip after a dumper stuck near Adarsh School. Those were different pipes and different agencies. The facts on Pataudi Road are narrower: a loaded truck, a slab that gave way, a driver who got out, and a stretch the civic engineer himself said has failed before under heavy vehicles. No one was injured on Friday. The next loaded truck on the same bay may not be as lucky if the adjoining slabs are not checked.