Not again: Drunk driver in Mumbai rams car into tea-stall, rickshaw then locks herself in

In a fresh instance of drunk driving in Mumbai, a woman rammed her car into a tea-stall, seriously injuring the owner and  then hit a car and a parked auto-rickshaw in suburban Bandra in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, reports Mumbai Mirror. [caption id=“attachment_2320998” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational Image. Reuters[/caption] 25-year-old Nidhi Parikh, chief fashion coordinator with designer Kristy de Cunha, was allegedly returning home from a friend’s birthday party when the incident happened at 2.30 am, the report said. While the crowd managed to rush the 38-year-old tea stall owner Vijay Shahani to Bhabha hospital, Parikh rolled up her windows, locked herself inside the car and decided to stay put even when the cops and women constables who arrived at 2.45 am requested her to open the door. Finally a key maker had to be called to get Parikh out of the car and she was then taken to Cooper Hospital where it was found that the quantity of alcohol in her blood was a lot more than than the permissible limit. She’s presently out on bail. The shocking part of this case is that despite the fact that there have been previous cases of almost similar incidents of drunk driving, very few pay heed to the warning not to drink and drive. Tuesday’s incident comes close on the on the heels of the shocking drunk-driving incident involving lawyer Jahnavi Gadkar, who drove her Audi on the wrong side of the Eastern Freeway after consuming alcohol and rammed into a taxi killing two persons. She was so inebriated that she reportedly fell asleep in the police station after her arrest and the police had to wait for her to get up in order to record a statement. There was another incident eerily similar to Parikh’s on 17 June, when one Shivani Bal locked herself inside her car for close to two hours and hurled abuses at the cops. She had been stopped while she was trying to escape having to undergo an alcohol test. The similarities don’t end there. Bal was also apprehended in the suburb of Bandra. A breathalyzer test confirmed what we already guessed– she had alcohol in her system. What stands out like a sore thumb in all these three cases is how easily these accidents could have been avoided had the drivers not ignored the option of calling a cab or letting someone else drive for them. As pointed out by Rajyasree Sen in an earlier Firstpost article, “This inexcusable lack of basic common sense is not unique to Janhavi Gadkar. I’ve met many people – men and women alike – who can easily afford a driver (which would cost Rs 20,000 a month, tops) or an Uber or a hotel cab. Yet these people prefer to drink themselves silly and then get behind the wheel of their fancy cars, with scant regard for what may ensue.” With three incidents of drunken driving in the past one month, it seems that frequent police checks in the city are having no effect. This invariably means that the rest of us out on the road have to look twice before we cross or drive.