Mumbai, March 26: It was a birthday gift Satish Sawant gave himself after years of hard labour, but saw the treasured possession–a Tata Nano– go up in flames within minutes of purchasing it.
When the software company employee took delivery of Tata”s dream car Nano last Sunday from its showroom at Prabhadevi near Mumbai”s landmark Siddhi Vinayak temple, he had no inkling of how nightmarish the drive back home to Mulund would be.
“I was at the steering with a driver from the showroom sitting next to me, while my wife Nutan and son Vedant were on the rear seat when the AC suddenly stopped working. Though it restarted on its own soon after, my wife felt the stench of something burning when we reached Mulund-Airoli bridge,” Sawant told. Soon they saw smoke coming out from the rear of the car where its engine is located and immediately stopped it on the eastern expressway, hardly five minutes drive from his Mulund home.
“Alarmed, all of us got out of the car and I had barely managed to pull out the documents from the glove box when the vehicle was up in flames. Thankfully, none of us was brought to any harm,” said Sawant, who turned 37 two days later.
Now a livid Sawant wants a detailed analysis of what went wrong and criminal action against those responsible for what could have led to a tragedy for him and his family.
—–PTI