Hyderabad, April 04: Senior IPS officer Rajiv Trivedi had a close shave yesterday when one of the wheels of his bullet-proof Ambassador car broke loose and went rolling down the road but the driver managed to control the vehicle in the nick of time.
The officer had to spend nearly 40 minutes in a roadside lodge before another vehicle was sent for him. It is learnt that the wheel hub broke due to the heavy weight of the car.
Trivedi, additional DGP, AP Police Academy, left his residence at Banjara Hills in his bullet-proof Ambassador car around 11 am. Half an hour later, while his driver Qasim was negotiating a sharp turn at the T Junction down the Whisper Valley, the front left wheel of the car got detached with the hub breaking under the weight of the car. As a result, the car lost its balance but the driver skilfully brought the vehicle to a stop and safety. Meanwhile, the detached wheel went rolling down the road.
Not knowing what struck them, the driver and the gunman were tensed up for some moments initially as Trivedi happens to be one of the IPS officers who face severe threat to life from fundamentalists and Maoists. But soon they realised that it was the detachment of the wheel that caused the problem. Luckily, the car was being driven at a low speed as the road had a bend and there was not much traffic at that time.
Trivedi spent nearly 40 minutes in the lounge of a nearby lodge while information was passed on to the motor transport section of the Police Academy and a crane was requisitioned to tow the car. Meanwhile, a spare car was sent to pick up Trivedi and drive him him to his office.
According to sources, Rajvi Trivedi, a 1986-batch IPS officer, had been using the BP Ambassador car ever since he worked as the additional commissioner of Hyderabad city police a few years ago. ‘’Prior to him, three other officers had used this car. Since it is a BP car, the weight is much more than the normal cars,’’ they said.
When contacted, Trivedi said that had it taken place on the road leading to ORR, it could have ended up in a major mishap as the car would have been at a high speed. ‘’The moment the wheel got detached, I thought the vehicle landed in a pothole. But the driver controlled the vehicle,’’ he said.
–Agencies